


Seasons of War

by eretria



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 1940s, Action, Angst, Dark, Depression, Drama, Europe, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Original Character Death(s), Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Drama, World War II, graphic descriptions of war wounds, war horrors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-04 23:36:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 76,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5352626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eretria/pseuds/eretria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chasing Bucky, always a step behind, Steve remembers the cycle of seasons that took him from the raw and naive young man to the Captain America who led the Howling Commandos into hell and, except for Bucky, out again. As his memories center on Bucky, one question haunts him: Is the Bucky he knew in the war the same one he knew before?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. December 2014, West Virginia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [auburnnothenna (auburn)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/auburn/gifts).



> **Warnings:** The story deals with a Bucky who is not in a good headspace, also with the horrors of war - if that's not your cup of tea, please turn back now, as I want you to enjoy this story, not encounter something upsetting. I have tried to diligently tag for the obvious, but of course, I don't know what your individual triggers are. If you have specific triggers, please don't hesitate to contact me with a comment here and leave me a way to contact you privately and I'll answer your question in e-mail, generally on the same day. If you feel uncomfortable with it being visible, the comment with your question can be deleted once I have a way to contact you.
> 
>  
> 
> **Author's note 1:** This story is finished (final wordcount clocks in at a little over 75 k) and going through a thorough fourth (!) beta. I will be posting chapters as they come back from my ~~beta~~ wifey, Auburn. I have a buffer and hope to post at least every two days, but events such as the wifey renovating an old house may interrupt a regular posting schedule. The current plan is to have completed posting the story by December 24th. Never fear, this is not a work in progress. It's merely a matter of smoothing out the remaining wrinkles, so to speak.  
>  **Author's note 2:** As English is not my native language, and it always bugs me to see German town names anglicised, please note my personal quirk to spell German town names in the native fashion. ;-)

 

 

**Seasons of war**

**December 2014, West Virginia**

The church burned like a torch all through the night and yet the bell kept ringing. Each tremor and crumble of the building shifted the bell tower and the heat of the fire set the bell swinging back and forth in a hair-raising toll. Steve thought: the church was screaming.

All he could do was stare as the flames consumed the church, roaring red behind its long-burst windows. It looked like a bomb had gone off inside.

Sam shook his head. Silhouetted against the flames behind him, the expression on his face was unreadable. Snow fell and settled on his head, reflecting the fire behind him in a flickering halo. "Those bastards stop at nothing."

"No one would expect a Hydra base in a church," Steve said, trying to sound matter-of-fact when all he wanted to do was get out of this place. The burning church should make him feel horrified beyond belief, he felt numb, as if some essential part of him had never left the ice and remained frozen.

" _He_ did," Sam said. He brushed the snow clinging to his eyelashes away. "This is, what, the fourth Hydra base we've discovered following him? How the hell is he finding them so fast?" Sam tisked. "We have the best artificial and human minds helping us out and we're still always a step behind him."

Hydra worked on a networked, but insulated cell system. Each cell only had contact with four other 'true' Hydra cells, though they might run dozens of others. None of those had any contact with each other and only one person linked to Hydra itself. Even Jarvis and Tony's best algorithms were having difficulty predicting where the Hydra cells would be. Taking down their soldiers didn't impact the real Hydra at all. Bucky, though, seemed to have some way of unearthing them. It kept him well ahead of them, sweeping back and forth across North and South America.

"I don't know," Steve said. The only thing he knew was that Bucky wasn't killing people, not even the Hydra soldiers he found in the bases he sacked. People tied up, trussed up like Christmas turkeys, yes, disabled, yes, but never killed. "I don't think it's revenge."

"Then what would you call this?" Sam asked, indicating the steeple burning like a lone torch against the night. The quickening clangor of the bell made it harder to hear him.

Steve didn't answer directly, but thought that maybe it was penance. One thing he was sure of, though. "This wasn't him. He hasn't gone on a destructive rampage so far, Sam, so why would he start now?"

Sam quirked an eyebrow at him. "He's got all the reasons. If he's regaining his memories, he's going have to issues."

Steve shuddered, losing himself in the details of Bucky's file, while still staring at the flames. Bucky _would_ have all the reasons.

"Shit, Steve, move!"

Sam tackled him into the snowbank that the fire hadn't melted away. Above them, the steeple groaned, loud over the roaring crackle of the flames, and listed to the side like it was losing the will to fight. Wood gave, splintered, shrieked. Finally, with a great clangor, still ringing its own elegy, the bell crashed to the ground.

In the silence after, the snow still fell. Gentle.

 

 

***

The transmission in their latest cheap rental car busted between Roanoke and Charleston, stranding them until the company replaced it.

The Motel M in Lewisburg was full up – some sort of family reunion – and only had one twin room left. It was like a bad rom-com. Sam didn't even blink when Steve brought him the news.

"As long as you don't snore," had been his only comment. He disappeared in the bathroom for the next half hour, turning his famed military one-minute shower into a twenty minute one. The walk from the broken down car to town had been damned cold so Steve knew better than to disturb him.

Steve sat on his bed now, propped up on pillows against the headboard with his legs drawn up just enough to support the laptop on his knees. The radiator clicked and in the bathroom, the water still ran. The TV murmured, showing a local newscast, its light reflecting blue off the polished, fake hardwood floor. The hotel room reminded him of the first months in SHIELD's apartment after waking from the ice, when everything was overwhelming and he'd spent his nights learning different languages to keep his mind occupied. French, Russian, Spanish. Anything to stop himself from thinking, from remembering.

The local television channel delivered just enough background noise to drown out the sound of sirens that swelled in his memory whenever he caught a whiff of smoke from his clothes.

During his last stay at Avengers Tower, he'd asked Jarvis to provide him with all and any information he could find on Bucky. Jarvis had been very helpful and they'd followed up every lead Tony's AI had provided. Jarvis had also found some websites people had put together about Bucky after Natasha had dumped what little information on the Winter Soldier there had been in electronic form onto the internet as well. People were on the fence about Bucky, some calling him a mass-murderer, some calling him a POW, and that didn't surprise Steve – it was a discussion he'd had with Sam, too.

There was one site in particular that had videos from people who knew or had met the Commandos during the war. Steve had been going through them one after the other, like a clockwork, each evening. He didn't want to just rely on Jarvis' help, because much as Steve was grateful for that help, Jarvis was a machine. He didn't have Steve's memories and might miss some nuance that was significant to Bucky. If Steve was completely honest with himself, it wasn't just about finding Bucky either. Viewing the videos gave him something to do in the evenings. He kept hoping that, eventually, the feeling of being disconnected from his past, as if the years on ice had put a glacier between him and the person he used to be, would give way. Listening to other people's memories of him had to help. Memories of them. Of then.

Sam stepped out of the bathroom in a billow of steam that fogged up the wide mirror over the vanity and distracted Steve from the laptop.

"Sorry," Sam said. "I think I used up all the hot water."

Steve groaned inwardly, but said, "That's okay. I can shower in the morning."

Sam padded toward his bed barefoot and checked out the TV. "Find anything good?"

"I wasn't really paying attention," Steve admitted.

"More videos?"

"Yeah," Steve said.

Sam looked ready to say something, but shook his head instead, exhaling. He started rummaging through his duffel bag with more effort than strictly necessary, though.

From the corner of his eyes, Steve saw Sam's head snap up. "Can you turn that down?"

" _Crews are still on site after the shocking fire that burned down the believed-to-be empty Mt. Zion United Methodist church near Hokes Mill earlier this evening. No direct evidence was found yet, but firefighters we spoke with said that it looked like – "_

Steve paused the video he'd just been about to start. "What?"

"You have the remote, can you just turn that down?"

"We should keep listening for more news," Steve reasoned. "Maybe we'll catch a lead on Bucky."

"You're not watching."

Natasha's quip from the helicarrier came back to him and he tried to lighten the rapidly souring atmosphere in the room. "I'm multi-tasking."

The smile Steve had been hoping for from Sam didn't come. Instead, Sam pulled a sweatshirt out of his duffel and put on his jeans and boots, then grabbed for his jacket.

Steve chanced a quick look out the gap in the window shades – snow was still falling so heavily, driven by the wind that had only increased in the past hour. He couldn't see the other side of the parking lot. Was Sam actually getting ready to go out? Now? "Where are you – what – ?"

"I'm going to get us something to eat," Sam said as he zipped his jacket. He paused with his hand on the door knob and his back to Steve. "Or maybe I'll just get us enough booze so neither of us will wake up with screaming nightmares tonight. And if you tell me now that that's not a healthy coping mechanism, I might have to punch you."

Steve slid the laptop off his lap and swung his legs over side of the bed to fully look at Sam. "Sam, what's wrong?"

Sam ran a hand over his head and exhaled in a huff. "Just a little allergic to Neo-Nazi Klan bastards burning down a church." He pushed the door open. Immediately, snow drifted inside. "I need some air."

The door fell shut behind Sam before Steve could say another word. He stared at the closed door, and listened to the newscaster switch to the next subject, to the radiator kick in to warm the air, to the wind lash against the door from the outside, Sam's steps going down the outside stairs, and wondered what the hell had just happened.

What had he missed? Was it really just the burned church or was it more? The church had brought back unpleasant memories for Steve – to put it mildly. Sam was a soldier, too, and Steve had assumed the fire reminded him of bombings in war, as well. He’d taken Sam’s silence on the way back as his method of coping, of regaining his foothold in the present as Steve did.

Sam always seemed to know how to do this, to compartmentalize the atrocities he’d witnessed during his service and look ahead. But the fire had kicked something loose inside him that took more than a silent car ride to handle.

Steve didn't get it and hated that. It felt like he was failing Sam as a friend.

His phone vibrated with an incoming message. Steve picked it up and his shoulders relaxed a little when he saw the text from Sam.

Sorry, that was just a little too close to home. It's not you.

Steve closed his eyes. He wanted to kick himself. Nightmares from past wars were bad enough, but the horror of burning churches was not restricted to history or conflicts overseas: Only last month, white supremacists had set fire to a church in Tennessee. Now Sam’s earlier comment about the Klan made sense.

You OK? Steve texted back.

The answer took a few nerve-wracking minutes to come in.

Not right now, but I will be. Nothing a cold beer and some deep-fried food can't fix.

Steve relaxed a fraction. After a moment's consideration, he asked,

Are we OK?

Quit worrying and tell me what to bring you.

Steve smiled.

Surprise me.

 

Liver and collard greens coming up, then.

Steve laughed and felt a weight slip off his chest. Yeah, Sam was okay. That didn't mean that Steve could just go on assuming that he always would be, though. He'd made that mistake before, hadn't he?

Next to him, his laptop dinged its low battery warning. Steve got up to plug it in. When he sat back on the bed, his gaze fell upon the screen and the website he'd been looking at earlier. He didn't remember a lot of the names listed on the site and the faces were changed by age, but one caught his attention. Joanne Sampson. He clicked the video because something about the woman with her short, ice-grey hair and striking blue eyes looked familiar in a way he couldn't place.

" _My name is Joanne Sampson_ ," the woman said. She wore a light grey sweater and scarf in a matching color. Pearl earrings. Her English was very good, but had a slight lilt to it that made it clear that she hadn't been born stateside. She looked uncomfortable in front of the camera and kept rearranging her scarf. "I'm not here to talk about Captain America. Although he was a good, kind man, I'm here to talk about another man under his command – Sergeant James Barnes."

' _Joanna Sampson was born Johanna Dittmann_ ,' a caption beneath the woman's image said. Steve's stomach did a weird flip-flop and he stopped the video and stared at the image now frozen on the small laptop screen. The sense of connection he'd wished for, that he'd searched for since waking up, hit him suddenly. His heart beat hard against his ribcage.

Little Johanna. Steve's mind flashed back to the summer of 1944 and the Dittmann's farm in Germany, the scent of blossoming linden trees and elderflower bushes, to fresh cut grass and strawberries warmed by the sun, and a girl with dirty blonde hair and a pretty flush in her cheeks as Bucky had braided her hair. It overjoyed him to see her alive, to see that she survived the war, and at the same time it broke his heart. She had lived her life, while he slept through it all. The little girl was gone.

He pushed the wave of self-pity away and concentrated on Johanna's face, trying to match up the little girl he knew to the woman he saw now.

She wore no make-up Her features held the same kindness that had already been there when she'd been a girl. She looked solid without being heavy-set, someone who would open her arms to you whenever you needed it and shield you from the world but who would also pull your ears whenever you did something your weren't supposed to do.

Johanna looked like her mother; she radiated a mixture of warmth and sternness.. The laughter lines crinkled around her eyes, but the hint of sadness around her mouth dispirited him. What happened to Lise and the rest of the Dittmann family after the Commandos left them? What about Cat, the kitten Johanna's sister had given them before they left the farm? He hadn't asked anyone, hadn't thought of them until now.

A memory of Cat traipsing all over the map table at headquarters and loudly meowing at Phillips until Bucky picked her up, scritched behind her ears and snuck her a bit of the spam from his breakfast sandwich made Steve smile. Peggy had kept giving Steve kitten reports after Bucky fell. Even when he was aboard the Valkyrie. She was the only one who might know what happened to the feline they'd smuggled into England from Germany, if age hadn't stolen that memory from her, and Steve hadn't even thought to ask.

Steve closed his eyes, took a deep breath and shook his head to clear it out. He'd forgotten how much memories could _hurt_. When he opened his eyes, Johanna's face still filled the laptop screen. He started the video again, curious about what she'd say about Bucky.

The video was fifteen minutes long. Johanna talked about the resistance work her mother had done, about the day the Howling Commandos appeared at their farm. About Bucky. Mostly about Bucky.

" _It's strange, you know?_ " Johanna said in the video and she looked away from the camera in a shy move that Steve remembered only too well. " _There were these strangers, talking in a language we didn't understand, and yet we took one look and knew we could trust them. One in particular."_

_"And who was that, Mrs. Sampson?"_

_"Sergeant Barnes. Bucky. Uncle Bucky, as my sister quickly came to call him._ " Her scarf had slipped and she righted it before continuing. " _The trust was immediate, because he was so genuine. Funny, too, but genuinely helpful, sweet and charming._ "

Steve felt a rush of warmth for Johanna. She could have made her story all about meeting Captain America. God knew enough people had made money from that. Johanna didn't talk about him at all, though. She'd only had eyes for Bucky, so it made sense that she'd come forward to tell her story when an interviewer had started asking about people who had known Bucky before he became the Winter Soldier. It warmed Steve's heart that she, too, had seen what a good man Bucky had been. Still was, to Steve.

" _How was his relationship with his fellow Commandos, could you tell?"_

_"It was clear Captain Rogers was the leader, but that didn't seem to matter. They all acted like equals and they all clearly cared for one another very much. Sergeant Barnes always kept looking for wherever Captain Rogers would go, though, so I'd say they were the closest. He seemed sad whenever he watched the Captain, though."_

_"Can you tell us little more about Sergeant Barnes?_ " the interviewer asked.

" _He was such a handsome man,_ " she said and color crept into her cheeks, while her smile grew apologetic. " _You've all seen the pictures, but they really don't do him justice, because when he smiled, it was like…_ " she trailed off, clearly embarrassed. " _Look at me, I'm just the same as I was back then. A silly girl with a crush._ " She shook her head and laughed at herself. " _But you see, he didn't laugh at me. He was the sweetest person you can imagine, so kind to an awkward, mousy 12 year-old._ "

She told the interviewer about Bucky braiding her hair and teaching her how to dance and Steve stopped the video again at an image of her smiling. As if it had just been yesterday, he heard the songs from the freshly repaired radio and felt the sun on his face as he watched Bucky braid Johanna's hair. That had been the last time he saw Bucky smile for real.

Steve contemplated showing the video to Sam. Sam needed to see that there was a Bucky who wasn't the Winter Soldier, that there was someone in there who was worth saving.

He started the video again and within seconds, Johanna's smile slipped. " _That was the last day I was happy,_ " she said. " _The last day I smiled for more than two years._ "

Steve tensed but forced himself to keep listening. " _What happened?_ "

" _My sister, Marie, she'd become friends with Jacques Dernier,_ " Johanna explained in the video, while an inset image on one side displayed an aged photograph of a younger woman with the caption ' _Marie Dittmann died in 1960'_. Barely twenty years old. Steve curled his hand around the side of the bed to anchor himself as Johanna continued talking " _When we heard the plane land the night the Howling Commandos left, she ran out with the kitten Bucky and Jacques had been playing with that afternoon. I followed her but she refused to give up before she'd said goodbye. She insisted they take the kitten with them. So they did. We stood there until the plane had left. When we got back…_ "

A hard line appeared around Johanna's mouth and she looked away from the interviewer. Her jaw worked and Steve's hand clenched around the frame of the bed. After a few seconds, Johanna composed herself and looked back at the camera. " _When we got back, our farm was swarming with soldiers. Mama had always told us to hide if we saw soldiers with a tentacled skull on their uniforms coming to the farm. I pulled Marie into the barn so they wouldn't see us…_ " She trailed off again and swallowed a few times. " _We heard shots being fired. Then the soldiers came into the barn. I held one hand over Marie's mouth when she tried to scream and the other over my own, yet I was so sure that they'd find us…"_

_"What happened, Mrs. Sampson?"_

_"We hid with the kittens under the straw and the mother cat,_ " Johanna said and laughed. It was a dead sound. " _She attacked the soldiers and they shot her. After that, they didn't keep looking. Marie was crying but they thought it was the kittens._ "

" _What happened to your family?_ " the interviewer asked.

" _When Marie and I finally dared to go out we…_ " Johanna's eyes welled up and something under Steve's grip gave and splintered.

" _We found our family. All shot. Mama. Opa. Our brothers. All of them dead._ " Johanna wiped a hand over her eyes. " _Marie and I were the only ones left._ "

No. Steve shook his head and felt his hands begin to shake, the room begin to spin. It couldn't be. Phillips never said… They'd all _asked_ about the Dittmanns after and no one had told them _anything_.

" _For the longest time after, all I could think about was how I was glad that at least the kitten survived._ " Johanna looked directly into the camera now. " _Jacques and Bucky having the kitten was my consolation. Isn't that insane?_ "

" _Do you blame the Howling Commandos for what happened to your family?_ "

Johanna laughed. " _God, no_ ," she said. " _I just told you that we were all happy that day, didn't I?"_

_"It just seems like such a coincidence …"_

_"It would have happened whether the Commandos came to the farm or not,_ " Johanna said with a set conviction in her voice.

" _How can you be so sure?_ "

She looked at the interviewer as if she questioned his intellect. " _I overheard the soldiers searching the barn talking and they weren't searching for Captain America or soldiers specifically. My mother had been betrayed by someone else in the network, someone Hydra had tortured until they broke and gave my mother away. They decided to eradicate the family root and branch._ " She shivered. " _I guess two little girls didn't seem all that dangerous to them, so they didn't spend too much time searching for us._ " A wry twist appeared around her mouth. " _Got to love it when misogyny actually works in favour of women for once, don't you?_ "

The video kept playing, but Steve couldn't look at it anymore. The clock on the wall ticked too loud and the mini-fridge hummed like an angry wasp. His heartbeat was loud in his own ears. Loud and hatefully alive.

They could have saved them, he thought. If they hadn't left that night, if they had stayed just a few hours longer, they could have saved the entire family. Instead, they left the Dittmanns behind to be slaughtered.

His stomach heaved and he had to run to the bathroom where he brought up everything he had eaten that day. The guilt tried to consume him as he remembered Lise Dittmann's kind eyes and strong hands, Bernhardt's sly smile, and the boys' flushed and excited cheeks as they looked at Monty's skin mag, little Marie and her kittens, and Bucky, braiding the flowers into Johanna's hair.

When his stomach finally settled, he decided to get on the phone with Pepper first thing in the morning. He would ask her to get Stark Industry's lawyers to take the video down so Bucky would never find out. He didn’t go back to the video either, but he looked up Johanna and Marie, which was how he found out that Marie committed suicide in her twenties and that Johanna had two children. Her daughter, Lise Marie Sampson, was now fifty years old. Her son, named Michael Buchanan Sampson was fifty-five. His nickname was Bucky.

For the first night since finding out that Bucky was still alive that Steve cried himself to sleep.

He didn't hear Sam come in and Sam didn't wake him.

 

 

***

_The air smells of pines, dry moss and summer. Coming out of a forest, he walks toward a small lake, not quite a mile long. The water is calm, a perfect mirror for the intense indigo of the sky._

_An old piece of thick rope with a knot at its end dangles from the overhanging branch of a tree. It swings even though there's no wind. Faraway laughter drifts over the lake, a sigh, a whisper, "I'm here, this is real." He leans forward, sees his own reflection looking at him, younger, so much more innocent. There's a face reflected in the water behind him, but he can't make it out as raindrops begin to plop little craters into the surface, rippling away into nothing a second later._

_When he looks up, the horizon boils with dark clouds. Lightning flickers and behind it, thunder cracks louder than artillery bombardment._

_One word in the silence after. "Remember." He knows that voice, turns –_

_Everything flares white as a lightning strike hits, so close the electricity makes every hair on his body vibrate, the thunderclap deafening and immediate. The bright, blinding after-glare makes him blink –_

awake.

 

 

***

In the morning, Steve called Pepper from the motel's still-empty breakfast room.

"No," she said after listening to his demand. It was kind yet firm. On another day, he'd have appreciated the bluntness, because Tony had told him that Pepper might be silver-tongued around executives and business people, but she made a point to be frank with the people she considered closest to her. Today, all he wanted was for her to agree with him and do as he asked her. Not for himself. For Bucky.

"He's regaining his memories, Pepper. Slowly but surely, it'll come back to him. And then he'll do just what I did – look himself up, to find out as much as possible to help him jog his memories. When he finds out about this, he'll – "

"Steve," her voice was reasonable, sad. Indulgent, he thought. He hated it. "Tell me something: do you really want to warp his reality? After everything that Hydra did?"

Something cold trickled down Steve's back as he contemplated this. Still. He shook his head, clearing the doubt that began to creep up. He knew Bucky, he knew what finding out about this would do to him. "You don't understand, this will kill him."

"Will it?" Pepper sighed. It created a loud, crackling noise in the line. "I know the video in question, Steve. And while, yes, what happened after that day is horrifying beyond measure, the main thing I took from it was the happy memory of a good day, the memory of a woman who was glad to know your friend and who admired him as someone of value besides being Captain America's second-in-command. She saw him as a person. A person she fell a little bit in love with." He heard her smile. There was a pause, then Pepper said, the smile gone from her voice, "The memory of him and that day helped her get through the horrors she faced. Is that something you want him not to find?"

"I… "

"Think about it, Steve. Do you really know what it'll do to him, or are you afraid of what it'll do to _you_ when he finds out about it?"

 

 

***

When Sam came down to the breakfast room, Steve was staring into some kind of cereal that he'd been stirring for the better part of twenty minutes. The complimentary continental breakfast, with its brown-spotted bananas, burnt coffee, soggy pancakes and scrambled eggs, depressed him. The mini-boxes of cereals at least were meant to sit until the contents were eaten.

"Hey, man," Sam greeted him. "Replacement car's been dropped off. We're good to go."

Steve nodded and kept stirring. "M-hm."

"Roads should be cleared by now, so we can leave when you're ready."

Steve nodded again and changed his stirring motion from clockwise to counter-clockwise. Pepper’s voice ran on an infinite loop in his head. He couldn’t make peace with her advice, much less figure out whether he agreed with her. If what she had said really was true… Was he really more afraid of finding out what it would do to _him_ when or if Bucky found out about the video?

"Also, I spotted a Yeti outside," Sam said. "Dancing the conga."

Steve looked up with a frown. "What?"

"Did you hear anything I said before?"

"Sorry." Steve let an apologetic smile flash across his face. "I was thinking."

"Really?" Sam asked, smirking. "Could have fooled me."

Sam's sarcasm was gentle, not cruel and somehow, it made Steve breathe a little easier. No hard feelings between them because of the night before.

"I'd ask you how you slept, but I have a feeling that it would be a stupid question."

Sam added a thin stream of maple syrup to his pancakes.

Steve barely bit back on a snort of bitter amusement. "Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Educated guess." Sam used his fork to cut his pancakes into small triangles before thoroughly dipping them in the syrup. Watching him was meditative.

"Just so you know, you're not getting behind the wheel until you've had a proper night's sleep and fed that super soldier metabolism more than some Frosted Flakes. You sacked out and skipped dinner."

Steve snapped his gaze up to Sam's face. "It's a seventeen hour drive." He'd calculated it after Jarvis provided their newest lead and the most efficient route there.

"Exactly the reason I'm not going to let you drive if you're not up to it."

"Sam, I don't – "

"Don't give me the super soldier shtick, even you need sleep."

Steve shrugged. "Not much."

"So you do admit that you need some. Which is more than what you've been getting in the past few nights."

"I don't really have a way of winning this argument, do I?"

"Nope," Sam said with a cheerful smile and shoveled a forkful of pancakes into his mouth. Sam seemed a lot better this morning, and Steve envied him that.

He looked at the disgusting-looking mush of soaked cereal in his bowl and realized he was hungry. Maybe they could get some burgers on the way out of town.

 

 

***

He knew he should be packing. Sam was down in the lobby settling the bill and would be back soon, but Pepper's words kept coming back to distract him, questioning how reliable his memory, his assessment of his relationship to Bucky, was. Maybe if he looked at Johanna's video again, he'd find some answers.

" _Sergeant Barnes always kept looking for wherever Captain Rogers would go, though, so I'd say they were the closest. He seemed sad whenever he watched the Captain, though._ "

Johanna had been an outsider. She'd been the one watching Bucky, not him. When she said Bucky looked sad, then she had seen something Steve hadn't. The thought gnawed at him and wouldn't let go. How much had he seen because he wanted to see it? How much had he missed because he hadn't been looking? Because he hadn't wanted to see? How much of what had been in front of him had he missed between getting Bucky out of that lab in Austria and Bucky's fall?

He rewound the video to watch it from the beginning again, looking for clues he might have missed.

" _He seemed sad whenever he watched the Captain, though._ "

Sad. Why sad? This had been the summer of '44, prior to the lake, prior to the chateau. What reason did Bucky have to be sad? He'd been happy at that farm. The word from his dream floated back: _Remember._ Remember what?

"It's not going to change the fifth time around," Sam said from behind him, making Steve flinch.

Sam was leaning against the doorframe, his bag slung over his shoulder. Steve hadn't even heard him come in.

"She made him smile," Steve said.

Bucky never smiled like that again, except that night at the chateau –

He wiped a hand over his face. He couldn't let himself think of _that time_. It hurt too much. He'd lost Bucky, and now, thanks to this video, Steve was beginning to wonder whether he'd lost Bucky even before Bucky fell. Bucky in the chateau, had he already been a stranger, someone Steve only thought he knew better than himself? He should have looked closer.

_He seemed sad whenever he watched the Captain._

"You ready?" Sam asked.

Steve stared at Johanna's face, frozen on the screen, smiling a young girl's smile in an old woman's face.

He closed the laptop's lid.

"Yeah," he lied. "I'm ready."

 

 

***

Seventeen hours from Lewisburg to Duluth.

With Sam driving along another long stretch of I-90 West, stubbornly refusing to let Steve take over, Steve had more time to think than he wanted.

The flatness of the Great Plains in winter got to him. It was so different from the East Coast with its cities and towns nestled together close enough it became difficult to tell where one started and another ended sometimes.

Europe had been different, especially in the Forties. Forests and mountains all around them and the scent of pine needles in the air. Clouds hanging low, especially in England, pressing down and closing the world in.

The plains ran on and on, white and barren and disappearing into the pale sky, giving his eyes and his mind nothing to hold on to except memories of other winters. Looking out the passenger side window at the white nothingness gliding past them, his mind returned to Johanna's video, whirling doubt, happiness, shame, homesickness for a time long gone, and horror into a nauseating miasma.

Sam reached for the radio, and Steve realized that he was being a horrible travel companion. He hadn't talked since they left the motel.

"Sorry," he said.

"I'm not a stranger to you brooding, buddy," Sam said with a smile. There wasn't any bitterness in Sam's voice, and Steve found himself appreciating Sam even more than he already did. Even shouldering all of his own problems and issues, Sam got it. He understood the need to just be silent sometimes and not fill every moment with chatter the way that Tony often did.

The radio came to life in mid-verse of a song.

 _And my tears like withered leaves will fall._  
_But spring could bring some glad tomorrow,_  
 _and, darling, we could be happy after all._  
 _As it is in nature's plan,_  
 _no season gets the upper hand._

"I'll definitely get the upper hand here," Sam said and reached for the skip channel button. "I should have known that the first thing we'd find in the middle of nowhere would be a country station."

Steve stopped Sam's hand in mid-move. "Wait."

Sam pulled his hand back but despite the fact that Sam was driving, Steve still felt his surprised gaze on him. "Seriously? Don't tell me you like Country."

Steve shrugged. "Not particularly." Country had been around back in the Forties as well, and he'd never been a big fan. But this song… Something about the lyrics made him listen.

"Then just let me change the station," Sam said with an uncharacteristic whine in his voice.

"Just this one," Steve pleaded. "Okay?"

"Fine," Sam grumbled. "But if you turn out to be a Country fan after all, we're taking separate cars from now on."

As promised, Steve let Sam change the station once he'd heard the name of the song. _Seasons of My Heart_. He wasn't going to get into a fight over which music to listen to and anyway, Sam quickly settled on NPR, one of Steve's favorites. Today’s subject was a debate over whether the FDA should force manufacturers to phase out all trans fats.

Steve tried to listen but his attention kept slipping away. The song's lyrics floated in his mind. Eventually, he got out his phone and tried to locate it on Stark Sounds. By the time they pulled into a gas station to fill up the tank, he'd downloaded fifteen cover versions.

When he came back from the restroom, Sam took a look at the Stark Sounds logo on Steve's phone screen and asked, "Got us some better music?"

Steve held out his phone and Sam groaned as he scrolled through the songs Steve had on it. "Is this an old man thing, listening to the same thing over and over again?" he asked with a half-smile.

"Ask me again when I am one," Steve volleyed back.

Sam barked a surprised laugh. "Touché" He clapped his hand on Steve's back. "If you're going to listen to all of these, do me a favour and wear ear buds. I'm not masochistic enough for this, even if you are."

That was only fair. "You got it," Steve acknowledged.

Earbuds in, he went through version after version, held captive by the verses but hating the music more and more until he found one, near the very bottom of the list that was completely different in style. Less annoyingly country and instead warm, gentle and almost blues-like.

Steve leaned his head against the window, the glass cold against his temple, and watched the long line of wire fence separating the shoulder of the highway from the snow smothered land. Not even a stump interrupted the flat expanse. He was reminded of the ocean.

Through the earbuds, the singer's low voice sounded intimate, like she was performing just for him. Steve thought of the strings of a violin in a London pub, the tinkling of a piano in France, of Lise Dittmann humming along to the radio Morita had repaired. And then, as if the singer was mocking him, came that damned verse.

_But spring could bring some glad tomorrow.  
And, darling, we could be happy after all. _

If Bucky hadn't fallen, if Steve hadn't crashed the Valkyrie into the ice… how happy could he or Bucky ever have been?

Nothing had turned out how Steve had meant for it to be. He'd planned on going home with Bucky after the war. But could he have? Could _they_ have? Or had it been a pipe dream, had Bucky been too far gone to ever return from the war?

Johanna had said Bucky was sad. Sad. Bucky had been sad when he looked at Steve. How had he missed that? What did it even mean?

Experience, the song said. Experience. Wasn't that the lynchpin? Experience had told him that he knew Bucky. The more Steve thought about Pepper and Johanna's words, the more he wondered how often he had failed to see the real Bucky. Looking back, he wondered if Morita and Monty and Peggy had tried to tell him and he hadn't listened. If he had, could he have changed anything?

_The seasons come, the seasons go…_

He sank into his thoughts and memories, recalling times of peace and times of war, trying to find the moment when he stopped looking. The moment when he really lost Bucky.


	2. January 1944, London

**January 1944, London**

The streets are covered in rubble from recent V1 attacks. Doodlebugs, the Brits call the V1 bombs. It seems too innocent a term for 1,000 kilos of high explosive Amatol. The bombings that the Londoners believed to be over after the Blitz are back, just in a different, almost worse form. London and its surrounding towns are the prime targets since June and no one has figured out quite how to predict or stop the pilotless bombs. Steve itches to finally get the intel from the German's weapons testing site in Peenemuende and change that.

In London, no one is particularly bothered by the sirens anymore. They've become part of life and the hectic running that Steve saw when he heard the first air raid sirens has changed into a more sedate walking pace toward the designated Morrison shelters. That British stiff upper lip really exists. On top of that, the pub they're in has an air-raid shelter – which, as Monty points out in a dry tone of voice – is just a fancy name for the beer cellar.

They've been in London since Christmas, waiting for orders. With rations being short and few Christmas trees thanks to the timber restrictions, the holiday had been a bleak affair. The war dragged on and on and the only decorations to be seen had been make-do or left from before the war. 

Bucky had knelt in front of one of the dirty-looking kids running loose on the street – the ones who hadn't been evacuated – and struck up a conversation about Christmas. He'd looked stricken before the girl finished describing her joyless Christmas, likely thinking of Christmases back in Brooklyn when all he and Steve could scrounge up was a pine twig and some cheap pork to make a stew. Bucky had talked to the girl's mother, too, asking polite questions and charming her into a smile, at least. Then he'd reached into his bag and had given his share of the chocolate all the soldiers had been given for Christmas to the girl, carelessly generous as he'd always been. She'd fallen into his arms with a squeal and Bucky had closed his arms around her carefully, petting her hair, his eyes slipping closed.

It tugged painfully at Steve's heart. Back in Brooklyn, Bucky had always talked about a family of his own. He's never done so since Steve got him out of the lab, though.

The pub the Commandos occupy now is the same one where Steve asked them to join him. It suffers from the same lack of goods as the rest of London, but hasn't yet, miracle of miracles, run out of booze, making it a favorite with soldiers and locals. The soldiers joke about the repeated servings of Spam sandwiches, though. With rationing in effect, the pub owner can't offer much more.

The siren wails again, a mournful sound followed by a booming detonation:a buzzbomb hit a house – about a block away from the sounds of it. A couple of glasses crash to the floor but the conversations only hush for a few seconds. The dim electric light flickers. They can't look outside, since the windows are already boarded up from earlier bombardments. Everyone waits for a few, tense seconds, then the pianist shrugs and starts playing _A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square_ again.

Cigarettes are lit, glasses raised, and the usual buzz of conversation starts again. The bartender lights a few candles and sets them on the polished dark wood of the. Bucky, Dum-Dum, Gabe, Jim and Dernier are playing poker somewhere in the corner; Steve can hear – especially Dum-Dum's loud complains about Jim's 'damn straight face' – but not see them. He's begged off, saying he needs to go over a couple of reports when really all he wants to do is nurse a beer on his own and think. Being here, with them, accepted and welcomed into their middle, is wonderful; to have a purpose, to make a difference enlivens him, yet he still wakes up in the middle of the night, thinking he's back to being ninety pounds and useless. It's something he never thought about before participating in an actual battle. His physical disadvantage would have endangered other soldiers; there was a real reason the army wouldn't take him before the serum. It's not something he has to worry about now, just something he's going to have to shake, but it haunts him.

The door squeaks and another hush falls over the pub. Steve turns on instinct, because this hush is different, not driven by anxiety. He can't really see from where he's sitting, it's too dim and he's in the wrong corner, but the pub really only ever gets this quiet when a woman walks in. Unwritten law is that women aren't allowed in pubs; Monty explained to him a few nights ago. It's the arrival of the American soldiers that has changed that, so a reaction of stunned silence is understandable. 

When he sees who it is, Steve feels his breath catch. Peggy. Clad in elegant civilian clothes, complete with a long, soft-looking black coat, leather gloves and a hat; she looks like one of the ladies from an expensive fashion magazine and just like the last time she was in here, she sticks out like a diamond in the dust among the crowd of unwashed, boozed-up soldiers. Her elegance fits the beautiful Victorian style of the pub, though, Steve thinks and blushes when he takes in the way she shakes her hair after she takes off her hat. It's pinned up in gentle waves he'd like to get his fingers in.

He hasn't seen her since before Christmas and his heart beats double-time. She's even lovelier than he remembers – he's going to have to amend the drawing he did of her.

She spots Steve and walks his way. Her smile lights up the dim room. His palms begin to sweat. Steve slides off his chair and stands, awaiting her arrival.

"Agent Carter," he greets her, a little stiff.

"Captain." She smiles at him and indicates the empty chair. "May I?"

"Of course!" Steve scrambles to get the chair for her, but she just smiles wider and pulls it out for herself.

"So," she says when she's taken off her coat, scarf and gloves, and is sitting. "How was Christmas?"

Her dress is the colour of a ripe plum, making her skin look extra pale and delicate. He has to concentrate to make conversation. "Full of off-key Christmas carols and Spam sandwiches," Steve says, drawing a smirk from Peggy.

"Did Falsworth start singing?" she asks. "I keep telling him he can't hold a note, but he keeps insisting he's Caruso."

"He's had a pretty bad cold, so no singing from him. Jim and Gabe took over for him."

"And that was off-key?"

"Surprisingly, no." Steve recalls the shiver that ran over him when he heard Jim and Gabe sing – both have warm and gentle tenor voices that reminded Steve of the singers at his mother's funeral. "Dum-Dum chiming in made it off-key."

Peggy laughs. "I can imagine."

"What about you?" Steve asks, surprising himself by talking to Peggy without it being weird or feeling forced. "How was your Christmas?"

"Quiet and lovely and bomb free," she answers. "I visited my family." She doesn't offer more and though he wants to ask questions: like where is home, does she have siblings, where did she grow up, where did she go to school, are her parents still alive, Steve stays silent. He doesn't know how to ask without coming across as nosy.

Peggy notices that he's become tongue-tied. "Actually… " she trails off and reaches into her bag to pull out a small tin box. "I brought you something."

Steve feels his face heat and a large, surprised smile spread over his face. "For me?" He feels bad immediately and his smile wobbles and falls away, because he doesn't have anything for her. Should he have?

Peggy rolls her eyes. "Don't let it go to your head, I brought something for Sergeant Barnes as well."

"For Bucky?" Steve echoes and is suddenly distracted from thoughts of acquiring a gift for Peggy. "I didn't know you two…," he trails off, moves his hand in the air in a gesture that is empathically _not_ flailing.

This time, Peggy rolls her eyes so hard he worries she might get a headache. Her mouth, accentuated by that cherry red lipstick, purses. "This isn't going to be another fondue moment, is it?"

Steve flushes what he's sure must be crimson. "I… "

Peggy sighs. "Remember the time before your debrief after your first mission?"

Steve nods, grateful for the distraction. "We were waiting for Colonel Phillips to get back from the Allied command, yeah."

"Remember that Sergeant Barnes was doing his Sergeant duties? Trying to remind you of what was actually possible for normal soldiers and that some things shouldn't be attempted even by enhanced soldiers?"

Steve ducks his head and takes a sip of his beer. "Yes, and I remember you walking in on us while he did."

Hadn't that been embarrassing? Bucky had been adamant. After a couple of minutes, Jim Morita, looking back and forth between them, had started to make clucking noises at the back of his throat and that eventually stopped Bucky's tirade. The nickname Sergeant Mother Hen had stuck, though.

"Well, the Sergeant and I had a chat while you were in debrief."

"You did?" He's still surprised. Bucky and Peggy haven't exactly had the best rapport, so the idea of them just 'chatting' seems odd.

"Some people actually know how to talk to women, Steve," she says, gently mocking.

"Bucky always has," Steve agrees but feels his heart fall a bit. So that's what it had been. He'd thought…

"You'll be the death of me, _Captain_ ," Peggy sighs. "We were talking about _you_." She gives an exasperated laugh. "We commiserated over trying to hammer things into your hard head. Then things we miss, like favorite foods. He told me about things you like. Took me a while to get him to talk about things _he_ actually likes."

Steve smiles, feeling sheepish. He should have known better. Bucky would never steal away anyone who interested Steve even slightly. "That's Bucky for you."

"Where _is_ your shadow, anyway?" Peggy asks. 

Steve indicates the other room. A cold draft from the boarded-up windows brings the typical soldier smell of spilled booze, cigarettes and sweat. "Back with the boys, playing poker."

"Well," Peggy says, reaching into her bag and getting out a jar of what looks like a dark jam. She sets it on the table next to the metal tin, "I can leave it with you and you can give it to him."

"No, no, I want to see his face when you give it to him." Even if they have talked, Bucky has always seemed a little cool around Peggy. Steve hopes that the surprise gift might change that.

Curiosity gets the better of him when he looks at his own gift, though. "Can I look?"

Peggy rolls her eyes with a smile again. "You could always stare at it and guess."

Steve wants to stick out his tongue at her. He pulls the tin closer and opens the lid. "Cookies!"

"Biscuits," she corrects him with an arch look.

This time, Steve rolls his eyes. He picks one, bites into it – and barely contains a groan . It's sweet and buttery – real butter, he can't remember the last time he had real butter – and melts in his mouth. His eyes flutter shut while he chews.

"Good?" Peggy asks and he looks up at her to nod. Her eyes look darker, somehow, more mysterious than he's ever seen them before. She's so damn beautiful that Steve loses himself staring at her, imagining all the pencil strokes he'd need to do justice to drawing her. The low light of the pub limns her hair, the gentle slope of her shoulder is visible under the plum-coloured wool of her dress. At the base of her throat, shadows pool, only broken by the occasional glint of a delicate silver necklace. He wants to paint the way the light accentuates the hint of her collarbone. His fingertips tingle with the desire to touch. Her dress is not revealing at all, but the mere glimpse of the gap between her collarbones is enough to send his heart racing. She accepts his scrutiny of her and her eyelids only flutter when he finds the courage to actually meet her frank gaze. A bit of that perfect lipstick tint is missing. In the dim light, he's not sure if he's imagining the faint hint of color in her cheeks

His contemplation is too intimate; he needs to say something. Steve swallows and brushes crumbs from the corner of his mouth with his thumb. "Fantastic," he says, inflecting all his enthusiasm into the one word. "Did you make them?"

Peggy barks a loud, unladylike laugh. "Me?" she asks and he feels stupid. "Trust me, you wouldn't be looking so delighted if I'd made them."

The tension in Steve's shoulders dissipates and he quirks the corner of his mouth up. "Not a baker?"

"Not good in the kitchen or the house at all," she says. She sounds more than a little proud of it. "Years ago, my mother even barred me from her garden, claiming I had not just one but two black thumbs." She grins; it sounds like a fond memory. "There's a reason I joined the military, you know?"

"Please send my regards to her, then," Steve says. "Her biscuits," he stresses the word and Peggy smiles, "are excellent. If the jam – "

"Preserve," Peggy corrects.

"The _preserve_ is half as good as the _biscuits_ are, Bucky will think it's Christmas again." He runs his hand around the metal lid of the jar, then pushes the jar back toward Peggy. "You really should give it to him yourself. He'll love it."

Peggy smiles, gently this time, and leans back in her chair. "You take good care of him."

Steve shrugs. "We take care of each other."

"He said the same thing," she divulges. "I'm surprised he's not with you, actually. You're usually inseparable."

Steve laughs. "Yeah," he says. "Have been since we were kids."

"So what happened tonight?"

"I needed some time to think, go over a couple of new intel reports from the Netherlands." He closes the file still lying on the chair next to him. "Not that I can remember much of what I read."

"Too wired?" Peggy asks.

 _Too distracted by your presence,_ Steve thinks. He indicates the lamps with a jut of his chin. "Low light's been giving me a headache. And I'm getting antsy. We should be out there. Hydra isn't giving up."

She arches a brow at him, the expression made milder by the way the corner of her mouth twists up a little higher on one side. "You don't much like twiddling your thumbs, do you?"

Steve smiles and pushes his glass half an inch to the left, feeling caught. "I really don't." 

"Neither do I," Peggy says. "We'll get moving soon enough; trust me."

A shout of dismay and loud laughter distracts Steve. Jim is collecting the cigarettes and chocolate piled on the table from a red-faced Dum-Dum. He can't see Bucky and doesn't hear the familiar cadence of his laugh or even his quieter chuckles. Steve shakes his head. "I'm not getting much done tonight," he admits and pointedly doesn't say that it's more because of Peggy than the noisy playing of his team. "How about we find Bucky and you can give him his present?"

"And make all the other boys jealous?"

"They're already jealous because you're talking to me."

"Mustn't start any more rumors then," she says with a smirk that doesn't reach her eyes. She pushes the jar at Steve and his face falls a little – she must have heard some of the nastier gossip that's making the rounds. It's difficult enough for Peggy being one of the few women with rank and a high position; he'd hoped it wouldn't reach her.

"Hey, Carter!" It's a testament to how much Dum-Dum's had to drink that he foregoes Peggy's title. Steve's tempted to give him an earful about that, but Peggy just shrugs.

"Losing again, Dugan?" she asks with an amused curl to her mouth.

"Not if I get you on my side. You're a lucky charm."

"And what makes you think I'd want to help you out?"

"He needs all the luck he can get!" Monty calls out.

Dum-Dum's face falls for a second, then he brightens with a broad grin. "You like a challenge, don't you?"

"Who's ahead?" Peggy asks.

Dum-Dum answers, "Morita's massacring us all." 

Peggy whistles. "That's going to take more than luck, Dugan."

They're having their conversation across half the pub, with Dum-Dum looking around the corner of the booth the Commandos occupy. Peggy has no problem shouting back.

"Come on, Carter!" Dum-Dum wheedles.

Peggy huffs and moves to take her coat from the chair next to her. "Aren't you lucky I happen to be very good at poker."

Dum-Dum claps his hand against the tabletop and brays a laugh. "Andy, a drink for the lady!"

Peggy walks over to the corner booth. Steve waits at the bar while the Andrew, the rail-thin barkeeper with a fondness for all things American, pours a large whisky. Steve made the mistake of bringing a softer drink for Peggy once. _That_ earned him an earful that still makes him blush.

"Keep an eye on that for me, please," Steve says and slides the tin with the cookies – _biscuits_ , he hears Peggy's disapproving voice in his head and smiles – and the jam over the dark wood counter. He knows they'll be safe with Andrew.

"She must like you," Andrew says, looking at the jar. "Raspberry preserve is hard to come by these days."

Steve fights a blush. "It's not for me."

Gabe shouts for him. "Cap, what about you? We need to even the odds here."

Steve raises his voice even as he crosses the room, clamping the file folders marked Classified – everything is Classified in the Army, even mess menu for next week – und his arm and picks up Peggy's whisky. "You have Bucky, don't you?" They don't need anyone else. Watching Peggy and Bucky play is all the entertainment anyone needs for the night. Steve certainly looks forward to it.

"Had, you mean," Gabe says. "We're a man short, even with the lady."

"What?" Steve's smile slips as he reaches the booth, sets the whisky down and sees Bucky isn't there. "Where – "

"Sarge went outside for some air," Jim says. 

"I wonder if he's not hiding a dame from us, considering how long he's been out there," Gabe says.

"Unless the dames in England find puking attractive, I doubt it." Jim stifles a chuckle in his beer, then looks up at Steve. "He was looking a bit green," he explains.

Steve shifts from one foot to the other. The muscles in his shoulders have knotted up. "I'll – "

Dum-Dum clucks loudly, sending Dernier into a fit of laughter.

Gabe gives Steve a magnanimous wave. "Now we have Agent Carter, we don't need you," he says, sounding wounded and long-suffering. "Go play Mother Hen." He turns to Dernier and mutters something in French. Dernier replies rapid fire and grins in a way that makes Steve think he needs to learn more French than _please_ and _thank you_.

Peggy, squeezed between Gabe and Monty, smirks and says, "It evens out."

Gabe laughs. "I like her."

"My winnings leave with me," Peggy informs Gabe and Dum-Dum with an arch look. 

Gabe and Dum-Dum groan. Monty just chuckles. "Brought that on yourselves, mates."

Steve has no doubt Peggy will beat them all. Her eyes twinkle and he's torn between basking in her presence and his worry for Bucky.

"Agent Carter?" Steve asks. He'll stay if she wants him to. It seems impolite to leave when she came here for him.

Peggy raises an eyebrow at him. "I can handle a few drunk soldiers, Captain. Now go find your shadow."

"Yeah, bring him back before she makes Morita cry," Dum-Dum says with a grin like a shark.

Jim just rolls his eyes. "Deal, Falsworth."

Monty gives one of his trademark barely there grins and begins shuffling the cards.

Steve squares his shoulders, gives Peggy one last apologetic smile, and leaves the pub in search of Bucky.

***

Steve needs a moment to adjust to the dark outside. The air smells of dust and smoke. London is blacked out, yet the night-sky horizon is orange and yellow from a fire blocks away.

Steve scans the street, but he can't find Bucky anywhere. All he sees is a large staff car, parked behind a pile of rubble. The car looks out of place. It's not clean, but it's undamaged and fairly new; that makes all the difference. There aren't many people who have the privilege of using staff cars, yet hearing Colonel Phillips' familiar drawl from the alley next to the pub still surprises Steve. 

"Barnes, you can stop pretending."

It's both a relief that Phillips is the reason Bucky is still out here and a concern at the same time, because what on earth has Bucky done? Steve wants to get closer, find out if Bucky needs backup, but he knows that Phillips is unlikely to be swayed if Bucky really has fucked up. Bucky won't appreciate Steve witnessing Phillips chewing him out either.

He can't walk away, though, so he stays where he is, his back pressed against the rough outside wall of the pub. Under normal circumstances, Steve wouldn't be able to make out what Phillips is saying, but his enhanced senses let him hear Phillips and Bucky.

"What am I pretending, sir?"

"I saw you back at triage, zoning out over the needles. I've seen that look before. I know what it means to…" Phillips trails off and leaves the sentence hanging in the air, thick with shellshock innuendo.

Steve tenses yet Bucky says nothing. "So, son," Phillips eventually continues, "because I'm still in the Christmas spirit, I'll extend that offer one last time: go home. Full pension. Be a war hero, find yourself a nice Brooklyn girl, settle down and have half a dozen kids."

Steve frowns. Is that really what Phillips thinks? That Bucky will just give up because of what happened at the Hydra base? It was bad: Steve sees it in the way Bucky no longer smiles as easily as he did before. But if Phillips thinks that Bucky will give up, go home and lick his wounds, he doesn't know Bucky. 

Steve feels like laughing at just the thought. What would Bucky do at home? Play mother hen from afar? Bucky's too stubborn to leave the good fight. Bucky doesn't give up. He's going to be right there beside Steve when they show those Hydra bastards they're never going to get away with their plans. Bucky will be there both to save people and to get his revenge on Zola and Steve will make damn sure that he gets it. 

Steve inches closer, just enough so he can look around the corner and see Bucky's reaction. Phillips and Bucky are standing close, with Bucky at parade rest, and Phillips smoking a cigarette. Steve frowns. He had no idea Phillips smoked. The end of the cigarette provides the only direct light in the alley and throws Bucky and Phillips' faces both into sharp relief.

"It's not home anymore, sir," Bucky replies. It's not the answer Steve had expected, but Bucky's right, of course. Home isn't home anymore because Steve gave up their apartment to a poor Irish couple with a baby due. He gave them the keys the night before he shipped out, which made a queer kind of sense since he'd first met them on his way back from seeing Bucky's ship off. Bucky doesn't know how Steve stood there watching the ship grow smaller and smaller until it disappeared on the horizon, his heart beating furiously in his chest, feeling lost, frustrated and alone, and yet so excited for what was to come. 

After the serum and once it became clear that he'd go on the USO tour, he'd sought the couple out and offered them the apartment. They'd been stubbornly proud, unwilling to accept his offer at first, but he'd reasoned that they'd be doing him and Bucky a favour, looking out for their place and their furniture until they both came back from the war. He knew that with their military wages, he and Bucky would be able to afford something much better once they were back. He kept paying for the apartment but never planned to return to it. Their few things, he'd boxed and left with Bucky's family. He'd told Bucky about that on their way from Italy to London and Bucky, still looking hollow-eyed and not quite right, had half-smiled and said, "Of course you did."

Phillips heaves an explosive sigh. "Your decision," he says eventually. "Just don't say I never offered you anything."

"Yes, sir," Bucky says, and he sounds so tired that Steve wants to make sure he sleeps for a week and doesn't see combat again until he's ready. Bucky would never allow Steve to shelter him, though. He should talk to Bucky after this, make plans for a new apartment, and give him something to dream about again. A place back in Brooklyn, but with a better view. With the sun waking them in the morning in their bedrooms – one each, but with an open door between them so they can hear each other breathe – and the evening sun sparking on the threads of bronze the sun leaves in Bucky's hair. A place with functioning central heating, their own bathroom, and a stove that doesn't burn every meal. Maybe they can even buy a radio and a gramophone.

Phillips takes one last deep drag from the cigarette, then stomps it out under his boot. He runs a hand over his forehead, then pinches the skin over his nose. "Head back to base, Sergeant," he says, sounding all business again. "All leaves and passes are cancelled. I want Rogers and the rest of his clowns prepped and ready to leave tomorrow at six a.m. sharp."

Bucky's salute is sharp, but his voice is resigned. "Yes, sir." He's voiced his doubts about the submarine mission Steve and Phillips had proposed already.

Phillips looks at Bucky for a few more seconds, then shakes his head and turns toward the pub. His boots crunch over gravel and rubble.

Steve dodges into the darkness of the bombed-out building across the street so Phillips won't catch him eavesdropping. 

The tinkling of the piano, raucous laughter, and a burst of obscenity-laced swearing filters outside as Phillips opens the pub's door. Jim must have won another hand and beaten Dum-Dum again.

Steve waits a few more minutes, then steps out of the building, the stench of ash and burned rubble clinging to his clothes. His mind is occupied with Peenemuende and the submarine cover mission. They've been talking about it for weeks now, getting reports from a deep-cover agent, and Steve knew the mission would happen fast when the chance came, but he hadn't expected it so soon. Howard has done his part, making sure everyone knows about the new tracker he wants the Commandos to test for him – it is real, just not as important as the double agent in the Netherlands waiting for extraction – and going after the Peenemuende submarine misleads any spies watching the coast. They'll go out aboard a fishing trawler chartered by the SSR, and then get to the coordinates _their_ spy promised for the submarine. Needle in a haystack.

After that, they would covertly infiltrate the Netherlands coast, rendezvous with their Resistance contact, and meet up with the double agent. It had to be them, the man refused to trust anyone except Captain America. The propaganda serves some purpose: Everyone on both sides of the war knows who Captain America is.

His mind already on the mission, Steve steps back inside.


	3. January 1944 – Netherlands

**January 1944 – Netherlands**

Not all missions will be heroic, Bucky had said in London. Some are just a cover for bigger ones. Don't get overambitious, Steve. Don't try to be a hero. Peggy said the same thing. But heroism has nothing to do with it, though, damn, if it doesn't look like the mission that's going to break him.

Bucky told him, didn't he? He told Steve that it was a bad idea, that the mission was insane: "A fishing boat finding a submarine in the middle of the night, waiting out of range while you _swim_ to it and put a tracker on it, come _on!_ " the brass were insane, "No one expects you to actually manage it, it's a cover -- it's impossible even for you," that Steve, when he insisted that he could manage it now, was insane, "Do you have a _death wish_ , Steve? Because let me tell you, there are quicker ways to get yourself killed. You're going to end up as shark food." Steve shrugged and stated, with a wink, that there were no sharks in the North Sea, which made Bucky snap, "Bullshit," and walk out the door. They hadn't talked on their way from London to Dover at all.

In the pre-dawn darkness, twenty miles off the Dutch coast, Steve swims through the roiling, icy waters of the North Sea. Bucky was right. There must be quicker ways to die. If he doesn't find the trawler soon, he won't make it. The choppy waves will force the submarine to dive soon. Just not soon enough, forcing Steve to swim back rather than the trawler picking him up. Captain Straughan is twitchy; it's likely he's already moved the trawler away from the danger zone, too.

All for a cover mission, with success a mere lagniappe for Howard. The real mission is a rendezvous in Ter Heyjde where they will pick up a roll of film with pictures of Hydra plans taken by an informant. Phillips informed the rest of the Commandos of the actual mission only just before the trawler put out to sea.. Only Steve, Peggy, and Bucky were aware before. Phillips ordered them to abandon the cover mission if the weather turned, but Steve insisted that he could do still it. Bucky told him he couldn't and that more than anything was the reason Steve decided to do it after all.

Bucky's right: he's an idiot.

On top of being miserable and weary to the bone he's so, so angry. He's put the Commandos and the trawler's crew in danger for nothing. Stark's alleged super-glue didn't live up to its promise. The damn tracker slipped from the sub's hull like butter from a hot knife. He's cost them time and endangered the primary objective. Phillips will be furious. He's fighting through churning, forty-one degree water, exhausted, and for nothing

His breath saws in and out, tearing his throat raw, and he's colder than he can ever remember being. Not even winters in New York were this brutal. It's draining all the strength from his muscles while it leaches the last warmth from his body. Salt stings in his eyes, while the waves crash over his face, carrying him from valley to summit in a never-ending cycle. The sea means to drown him, blinds and deafens him, and he's getting weaker and weaker. Not even his strength and enhanced metabolism can withstand the cold for much longer.

Clouds obscure the stars that could have guided him, so he hopes he's swimming in the right direction. The thought opens a Pandora's Box of doubt. Steve doesn't know if he'll make it. He kicks his legs, keeps his arms stroking through the water, and somehow manages the task of breathing slow and even against the crushing panic closing around his chest. Miles of angry water are all around him and below him a freezing, dark abyss. He's alone, with no one to rescue him. What if Erskine's serum wasn't made for this? What if, as Bucky asked, it's not permanent? What if his body is failing him right now?

Another wave crashes over his face. Steve clenches his teeth and wills the panic to subside, the thoughts to quiet. He begins to count his breaststrokes to distract himself.

He reaches three hundred and he's at the end of his tether, drained, half-frozen, and ready to just let the darkness pull him under. Until, like a star in the night, he spots quick flashes of light in a regular pattern. Short, long, long, short, stop, short, short, long, long, short. Long, short, long.

It repeats twice.

Morse code.

_Punk_ , Steve deciphers and the snort of laughter that's almost a sob makes him cough and choke on a mouthful of salty water.

They're idiots for doing it; it could give away the trawler's position, but Steve has never been so glad to be on the receiving end of an insult before. He corrects his direction and kicks his legs, swimming hard and sure once more.

 

***

Five hundred breaststrokes and, still, Steve can't see the trawler. Did he hallucinate that message? The storm roars on, rendering him half-deaf. It feels as if the sea is made of boiling ice. Water closes over his face again and again as new waves carry him up and down, in a never-ending rollercoaster that's worse that the Cyclone. It's getting harder to keep moving.

His body knows the end is coming. He mobilizes what strength there's left in one last attempt at avoiding the inevitable. Maybe the trawler will find him, maybe they'll find the needle in the haystack before he drowns or freezes to death. Bucky's on board after all, and Bucky always helps Steve out of situations Steve can't get out of on his own, despite his bull-headedness. Even as his legs turn to lead and his arms no longer want to move, and the water seems to warm, Steve knows he has to keep swimming. Because if he doesn't, Bucky will be livid. Livid that Steve proved him right and did get himself killed. Livid, too, because Steve didn't share his cookies with him. He remembers Peggy's jam now and wonders if she ever gave it to Bucky? If he drowns here, he'll never know. Bucky'll never get to tell him and Peggy will be so disappointed…

Something hits his head hard and for a fleeting moment he wonders if Bucky actually whacked him across the head for being so forgetful. He should have shared the cookies with Bucky, Bucky always shares his rations. They'd been so good. What he wouldn't give for one of them now, anything but the damn saltwater…

"God damn it, soldier, _grab the rope_!" Someone shouts, loud enough to pierce Steve's daze. The thing that hit is head earlier hits him again. Grabbing on to the rope – rope? – is automatic; he doesn't think, just follows the order. When he crashes against something hard again, his mental haze lifts enough to realize he's collided with a boat and that a rope is in his hand. He looks up and on the other end of the rope is a demonic-looking shadow, highlighted red and menacing by a blackout flashlight. Steve shrinks back and nearly loses his grip on the rope. The shadow keeps shouting, though, and as if pulling Steve in like a homing beacon, the noise turns from an unintelligible slur to words and the shadow turns into a person and, finally, Steve recognizes Dum-Dum, his stupid Bowler still on his head despite the wind. Dum-Dum shouts at him to climb up over the roar of the storm and the sound of the ship's engine, but all Steve can manage any longer is to not let go.

It takes Dum-Dum and Gabe to haul him on board. As soon as he has the trawler's planks underneath his feet, Steve collapses in a heap, coughs and pukes salt-water, then rests his forehead against slick wood and tries to remember how to breathe, how to stop the shivering. He's so exhausted and relieved he wants to cry. He coughs and shakes and barely hears the commands shouted over thick static noise in his head. Dum-Dum curses as he bends down next to him and places something heavy and scratchy around his shoulders.

He rubs Steve's back with brisk, efficient hands. His actions clash with his harsh words.

The contact doesn't last long enough. Dum-Dum's up again when the ship does a slow motion roll from side to side, deck going down and then coming up again, and Steve's stomach protests. He shakes his head and forces himself to look up. Sees Gabe hanging over the railing puking his guts out while Dum-Dum, Jim, Dernier, and Bucky help the crew secure the ship and get the wet rope off the deck. Everything feels fragmented, as if he's watching filmin the theater, images skipping and jumping when the roll of film is worn out and spliced from being played too many times.

Oh, God, but he's cold. So cold. Steve stays where he is, panting, shivering, breathing in the reek of wet wood, fish guts and diesel smoke. It smells like salvation.

Over the thirty degree angle of the water-slick deck, Monty slides up to Steve and stops himself with a hand against the cabin. The wind screams like a banshee, ripping away Monty's words.

Monty leans close to him and shouts again, "Did you get it done?"

Steve coughs and tries to pull the blanket closer around his shoulders but his fingers are too numb to secure it. It's barely any help anyway; the spray from the waves has already soaked the heavy wool. The tops of the waves atomize into tiny droplets that batter into his skin like hail. It _hurts_. Around him, it looks like the sea is smoking. "It's so c-cold," he gets out between the chattering of his teeth. That wasn't what Monty asked, was it? But what –

"Steve," Monty's kneeling in front of him now, skidding a little when the trawler rolls again. He holds on to rough ropes leading to the winch. "The tracker."

"I…" Steve trails off, wondering why he should track anything, there's no way to track anything in this mess. The sea is whipped into a grey-blue mountainscape with waves standing three storeys high. He stares as they crash over the trawler's bow and sides, hears the screeching of the wind and the groaning of the hull, and tries to make sense of what Monty's asking. A plume of diesel smoke from the overheated engines sends him into a new coughing fit and he doubles over. His lungs ache in an all too familiar pain. Oh, God, he wishes he weren't here. His mother is going to wonder where he is.

"Steve, mate." Monty rests his hand against Steve's jaw and neck, then taps it, redirecting Steve's attention from the roughness of his palm to his face. "The tracker. Did you get it attached to the submarine?"

Steve wipes the back of his hand over his mouth. Monty's gentle urging cuts through the sluggishness of his thoughts and he looks up. "It didn't stick," he says and hates what that says about both him and the mission.

Monty's face falls for a second before he gets himself in check. "Never mind," he says. "I'm just glad we found you in this mess." He wraps his hand around Steve's bicep and pulls him up. "Come on, let's get you to the fo'c'sle."

Steve, never interested in the Navy, has no idea what Monty is talking about but stumbles to his feet nevertheless. He nearly loses his balance when the trawler rolls to the side. Monty does lose his and shoves him roughly through a hatch and down a steep metal ladder as a result. Steve goes down again with a groan, his legs unwilling to carry him any farther. The hatch falls shut behind him and he nearly sobs at the warmth that greets him in the crew's quarters. He crawls toward the source of the heat – a small iron stove in the middle of the cabin – on his hands and knees. His teeth are chattering and he knows that the stove can't realistically produce much heat, but compared to the icy wind outside, it's like a furnace. The crew cabin is dark and the hammering of the engine overwhelms every other noise. Steve closes his eyes and shivers for what feels like hours.

All too soon, the hatch opens again and brings in a gust of cold wind and sea spray. Feet clatter down the ladder.

"You stupid, god damn bastard," Bucky says and crashes to his knees next to Steve. Bucky's lips are pressed into a thin white line. He pulls Steve into a rough hug that feels just on the wrong side of desperate and Steve slumps into it and presses closer when he feels Bucky warm and alive against him.

The hatch opens again and this time, Dum-Dum joins them. He gives Steve and Bucky one long, assessing look, then moves away, tottering through the swaying cabin as though drunk.

Bucky slips up behind Steve and pulls Steve's back against his chest, clasping his hands over Steve's stomach. Bucky is warm, so warm, and Steve burrows into him, feels as if he's ninety pounds again and sick with pneumonia, with Bucky's warmth the only thing keeping him from dying.

Dum-Dum returns with a tin mug that he presses it into Steve's hand. "Drink," he orders and watches like a hawk while Steve cups his hands around it and downs the lukewarm tea. It's disgusting. Steve has never had anything better in his life.

Behind him, Steve feels Bucky nod, then Dum-Dum says, "Scoot over." Dum-Dum plonks down in front of him, angled so that Steve's legs are under Dum-Dum's thighs and he can reach out to grab Steve's hands and rub them between his.

His mind clears slowly once the shivering stops. The storm rocks the trawler up and down, making the hull groan. He hears the shouts of the crew, edged with desperation now. They're seasoned sailors, intel has it they've been together since the first war ended. If such men are worried, the storm must be really bad. They shouldn't be out there. These men have families back home, people who need them. His muscles lock up when it hits him: they wouldn't be here, none of them would have even left port tonight if it hadn't been for him and the Commandos. Bucky carefully rubs his arms, but Steve's ashamed for accepting the reassurance. His stunt with the sub has made things worse than the storm, he's cost everyone hours they could have used to get away from the worst of it. Steve's breath hitches, he chokes. There's a line between bravery and recklessness, and he crossed it. His team, the crew. His stubbornness, his inability to admit defeat, have endangered everyone on this ship.

"Had us a bit worried there, Cap," Dum-Dum says, distracting him. "I thought Sarge was going to – "

"Shut up, Dugan," Bucky pushes out from between clenched teeth.

The hatch flies open once more and Monty stumbles inside. "Is he all right?"

"He's getting there," Dum-Dum answers for Steve.

Yes, Steve thinks, he is. And it's about damn time he started doing the right thing. He lets the blanket slip from his shoulder and comes to an unstable upright position. "We need to go and – "

"And do what, huh?" The skipper, Straughan, a man with a strong accent Monty said was Newcastle, appears from behind Monty, looking red-faced and livid. He has to shout over the roar of the engine and the crashing of the waves against the trawler's bow. "Sun's up soon enough and if that sub sees us, we're done for. I've already risked my life and that of my crew to get you across the sea and search for you. I'm not sticking around here for one more second. Not even," he turns to glare at Bucky, "if you hold a gun to my head."

"We've got him back now," Dum-Dum says, shifting the attention away from Bucky. "Rest don't matter."

Steve wants to ask what Bucky did, but if he knew he might have to do something about it. Sometimes an officer needs to stay ignorant. That's what Peggy told him the last time he ended up disciplining the Commandos for breaking the rules.

It doesn't matter. There are more important things at hand now. Steve struggles to his feet and staggers toward Straughan.

"We're heading back to port," Straughan declares with a glare before leaving them.

Steve shakes off Dum-Dum and Monty's hands and follows Straughan to the wheelhouse. Bucky trails along with them, muttering viciously under his breath all the way.

"Captain – " Steve starts out once they're inside with Straughan and the first mate.

"No!"

"Let it go, Steve," Monty counsels as Dum-Dum secures the hatch. Bucky stations himself where he can come to Steve's side or grab the first mate if necessary.

"We have to finish the mission, we can't fail now," Steve says, willing Straughan to understand that it makes no sense to turn back now.. Their contact in Ter Heyjde only has a small window in which he can meet them before he gets relocated to a Hydra facility somewhere in Italy. If they turn back now, they'll lose his trust and never get his information. "It's critical to the war effort." His reasoning comes out wrong.

"You staying alive is more critical!" Bucky shouts over the storm. His gesture encompasses the boiling sea around them. "You got out of _this_. You already tempted fate. Do you really think you'll get out a second time?"

"I'm not talking about going back after the sub," Steve says, trying to stay calm, to make the crew and his team understand that he's not doing this out of spite, damn it.

"What?" Bucky asks, clearly taken aback.

Steve has no time to explain, he can't keep them here any longer than he already has. "Captain, we need you to turn the ship around and get us as close to the coast as you can."

"I said no. This isn't up for discussion," Straughan says, his hands wrapped tight around the wheel as he guides the trawler head-first into another huge wave. "I'm not getting any closer to the coast. Weather won't let me anyway."

Steve takes a step closer and skids as the trawlers rolls. When he's caught himself, he makes sure his body language is commanding but not threatening. "I'm just asking you to do what you were prepared to do. No more. No less."

Straughan's chin juts out. A vein at his temple begins to pulse.

The trawler groans like it's going to break apart when it sinks into another valley and Straughan white-knuckles it back up and through yet another epic wave. Water breaks over the bow, foam and icy spray spit against the wheelhouse's windshield and Steve imagines Straughan and his crew outside in that water, clinging to the wreckage of their destroyed boat. He pictures their families, remembers his own panic earlier, the naked fear of death, and tries to compromise somehow.

"How close to the Dutch shore can you get us without risking your crew and your ship?" Steve asks Straughan. He knows that they can't risk the trawler running toward the German-controlled Dutch harbor.

Straughan eyes him. "Two miles at the most." He sounds wary. "It's a tricky coast on a good day. In this weather, every inch I get you closer increases the risk that I don't get out again."

"Colonel Phillips will make sure you get hazard pay on top of what you've been offered." It's a gamble, but a promise Steve's sure Phillips will honor. If not, he'll get Stark to pay. He owes Steve for the damn tracker, after all.

Straughan grumbles under his breath, "Might have to pay that to our widows," but huffs an acknowledgment eventually and turns to his first mate. "Eliasson, figure a course that'll get us there before dawn."

"And how are we supposed to get to the shore?" Dum-Dum asks, looking out at the froth-crowned waves racing toward the trawler. "Because I for one didn't pack my swimsuit."

Straughan looks toward the back of the trawler, then out at the raging sea. "Well, there's one option…" He sucks in a breath. "But it'd be as good as suicide."

 

***

"Really?" Dum-Dum asks. "This is the brilliant plan?"

"Looks like it is," Gabe says as he and Dernier help the crew untie the life raft.

"This thing," Dum-Dum pokes his index finger toward the raft, "is literally a nutshell. We'll get washed off in seconds!"

"Then you'll have ten to fifteen minutes to get back on board before you start to get hypothermia." Jim sounds a lot jauntier than the situation warrants. Whistling in the dark. Steve knows all about that strategy. "Always assuming you don't die because you're hyperventilating and swallowing water."

Dum-Dum spits on the deck. "Fuck you, Morita."

"What you should take from Jim's charming display of black humor," Monty says, "is that if you do get washed off, try to get back on board as soon as possible so your body's not in the water."

"He's joking, right?" Dum-Dum turns to Steve and gives him an imploring look. "Tell me we're not actually considering this."

"We're closer to this shore than to the other," Steve says.

"I'm not setting one foot inside that thing," Dum-Dum says. His moustache hangs wet and limp.

"Well, you're welcome to go back to England in this weather," Jim points out. "All the way back across the sea. On a boat without a life raft…"

Dum-Dum's inventive set of curses ends in another wave of puking. Monty holds on to Dum-Dum's belt so he doesn't get washed off the deck.

"It's a stupid-ass idea," Bucky says.

Deep down, Steve agrees.

Nevertheless, Bucky's the first one inside the raft.

 

***

They make it close enough to see the shore without capsizing. They're all drenched, despite the oilskin coats they're wearing. The waves fill the raft again and again and it's a losing battle against the elements. They're bailing non-stop to keep the raft from being swamped. When he's not puking his guts out over the side of the raft, Dum-Dum curses like the sailor he'll never be. Gabe and Jim man the oars, trying to steer the raft as much as they can. Steve starts starts using the shield to bail as well. When he looks up and sees the dunes, a glimmer of hope that somehow they'll make it there okay warms him… before a wave hits the raft's port side.

The life raft rolls. Still holding his shield, Steve is thrown clean out. He glimpses Bucky and Monty tumbling into the frothing green waters under him, then the raft comes down. They've all so cold and wet it shouldn't make a difference going into the water, but as soon as he submerges, Steve's muscles lock up. He breaches the surface and hyperventilates uncontrollably as he swallows water and coughs while fighting not to submerge again.

The raft doesn't roll back and starts to sink.

The waves crash over their heads, stronger now they're in shallower water and closer to the shore.

Steve refuses to give up. He's not capable of it. It's not bravery, it's some part of him, some deep down part of him that refuses to die in view of the wrong side of a beach. He didn't died in the middle of the North Sea, he damn well won't die now. Not while he's responsible for his men. He starts to swim and shouts for the others to do the same. He doesn't know if they can hear him, but even that doesn't matter now, as long as they see him. Some instinct tells him that this is the only thing that will work and he doesn't think twice, he just does it. He locks the shield on his back and swims.

Bucky confessed to him once, back in Brooklyn, that he wasn't a great swimmer. He could swim, he just never got around to practicing, so all he could manage was a better version of a dog paddle. Steve worries about him now.

Bucky's breaststrokes are strong and full of purpose when he looks over, though. He must have learned in boot camp. Steve remembers his moment of panic before the trawler found him in the middle of the North Sea. Maybe fear of death enhances the will to live, making you remember everything you once learned, and helps you to use it.

It's not true for Dum-Dum, though, or maybe Dum-Dum never learned how to swim at all. He paddles forward, determined but hopeless, because he keeps pushing his hat back on his head when another wave threatens to wash it off.

"Will you just let go of the damn hat?" Steve snarls as he grabs Dum-Dum.

"You have your shield, I have my hat. You let go of yours, I let go of mine!"

The whole exchange would be funny if it weren't for the waves that keep crashing over Dum-Dum's resolved face, nearly drowning him. Steve doesn't point out that the shield is secured on his back and that he doesn't need a hand he needs for swimming to hold on to it. Dum-Dum is as stubborn as Bucky and Steve put together.

Steve ends up towing him to the shore. Dum-Dum doesn't protest.

One by one, the Howling Commandos stagger onto the wide beach and crumple just outside of the surf. They look like half-drowned cats, clothes dripping wet and now caked with sand, lips blue and teeth chattering. Snow falls and clings to them, flung on a scouring, brutal wind. Dawn is a dim gray line to the east, the horizon lost in the storm.

Bucky wades from the water last, dragging Dernier out with him by the collar until they're both clear. He collapses next to Steve, breathing heavily and coughing. Dernier crawls a few feet further on his hands and knees and then pukes up half the North Sea.

It only hits Steve now: he's asked too much. They all could have died.

"Told you –" Bucky's teeth chatter too much for him to finish the sentence on the first try. "Told you this was a stupid-ass idea," he says and thumps his hand in a half-hearted fist against Steve's chest.

Steve sits up and helps Bucky sit up as well. "Yeah," he acknowledges, suppressing a shiver. "Yeah, you did."

Bucky looks around; his eyes get clearer by the minute. "We need to get off the beach, it's bound to be watched. Need to warm up, too."

"Not sure the others can move yet, to be honest." Steve's surprised Bucky can.

"They'll have to." Bucky staggers to his feet and grabs Jim and Gabe by the collars of their uniforms, giving them a tug. "Come on, you guys," he says when all he gets is a groan. "I didn't survive this just to get shot on the beach."

Monty crawls on his hands and feet over to Steve and asks, "What the hell did Barnes eat that we didn't?"

Steve shakes his head and pulls Monty and Dum-Dum to their feet. Dernier has managed to get upright on his own. He looks between Steve and Bucky and mutters something filthy in French.

Gabe, who is closest to him, catches it and laughs, a sound that turns into a coughing fit as they stagger toward the grassy, windswept dunes.

"What?" Jim asks.

"He says they are both pox-ridden sons of sows. Also, whatever it was Sarge had, he wants it."

"He really doesn't," Bucky says, sounding strangely flat.

Steve frowns at him and thinks that actually, he'd just about kill for a Spam sandwich right now.


	4. March 1944, Italy

For this chapter, please heed the "war horrors" warning in the tags.

**March 1944, Italy**

They won't be extracting Dr. Humlov today or any day. He has a half inch hole in his forehead and a two inch hole at the back of his skull. His body lies in a pool of his own blood and urine, eyes open wide, mouth contorted in a last scream. No one else is left in the Hydra lab Steve fought so hard to reach.

Humlov had family. Hydra used them to compel him to work for them. The SSR had smuggled them back to Britain though and Humlov agreed to defect. His wife and children were waiting for him somewhere in Scotland. Damn it.

Bucky skids into the room, takes one look at Humlov, and curses under his breath. He checks the lab, looking, Steve knows, for anything they can salvage for the mission. There's nothing, however; they're too late. "Let's get out of here," Bucky urges once he's confirmed that.

"We can't just leave him here," Steve protests. It's not rational, but the idea of going back to Humlov's wife with empty hands makes it hard to breathe. Humlov's family will want a body to bury.

"Yes, we can and we will." Bucky grabs his arm and starts pulling him away from Humlov's corpse. " _Move_. Collin's men are getting slaughtered out there. We need to get to the rendezvous and get out of here."

Only the threat of more casualties gets Steve moving. He can't save the dead, but he can save the living. He resents that Bucky knows and uses that. Behind him, Bucky places several of Dernier's charges in the lab. 

The signature whir of the Hydra's futuristic energy weapons – like something from the Flash Gordon films he and Bucky loved growing up – fills the night. Huge, wet snowflakes whirl on strange heat currents where the blue beams pass, while the freezing wind rips away the heat his muscles generated running to the lab. Flashes of cobalt light, like evil lightning, disperse the night's darkness repeatedly. The afterimages almost blind Steve, but each new salvo shades Bucky's wet face into sharp, skull-like relief, all shadows and electric blue pallor. They dodge blasts from Hydra weapons and machine guns, into the deafening cacophony of battle.

Steve's heart is in his mouth; he's sure Hydra's weapons will kill him too if he gets caught in the crossfire. He's not sure even his shield will withstand an energy blast. How can he protect Bucky? He contemplates giving over his shield, just to give Bucky a better chance, but Bucky doesn't know how to handle it as well as Steve does. It's better if he tries to deflect the blasts from both of them.

Familiar-sounding return fire from three rifles directs them to where the others are holed up. 

"Where is he?" Dum-Dum shouts over the shots Gabe fires methodically. 

"KIA," Bucky answers. His voice sounds flat and horribly matter-of-fact.

"So this whole damn thing's for nothing?" Dum-Dum asks. There's blood caked in his mustache.

Steve doesn't answer him. "Let's get out of here," he says instead and raises the shield. "I'll distract them, you run, I'll meet you by the forest line."

"Steve – " Bucky begins, but it's Monty who moves.

"You'll do no such thing," Monty says and grabs Steve's upper arm. "We'll only get out of here if we work together as a team."

"Then how do you propose we do that without a distraction?" Steve asks and shakes Monty's hand off. "I don't see any of Collins' men ready to cover us."

"We've got a distraction," Bucky says. "Just a couple more seconds and we – "

The rest of his sentence is drowned out as the lab building explodes in a giant, booming ball of fire. Even at their distance, it pushes a wave of hot air at them that dries the dusting of snow on Steve's cheeks. The energy weapons stop and an eerie silence follows until hectic orders in German filter through the night, accompanied by the crackle of a growing fire. Monty pokes his head over the rubble, ducks back and says, "They're busy regrouping. We're not going to get a second chance. _Go_."

They sprint in crouched zigzags, weapons clutched at the ready, vaulting rubble by the flickering light of the flames eating the remnants of the lab building behind them. Steve curses the light because it silhouettes them, even while it lets them move faster over upturned soil, wet snow, and more than one dead body from both sides.

They make it halfway to the treeline and safety when they're spotted. A near miss from one blue bolt almost shears Gabe's arm off. They skid into the darkness behind a bullet-riddled troop transporter lying on its side in a ditch. Its torn tarp flutters over the ground like giant bat wings. Dum-Dum keeps going and Steve pulls him back into the ditch just in time to stop him from being vaporized. A salvo of gunshots accompanies Hydra weapon, hitting the metal chassis right next to his ear. When he shakes his head trying to hear again, he stumbles and falls on something soft and warm. He pushes back up with a start when he realizes that he landed on a body.

It's face down, to his guilty relief, and, bent over, he scrambles away, to the back of the troop transport, Dum-Dum at his heels.

Steve pulls the tarp back and in the flickering light he sees four of Collins' men, their uniforms soaked in blood. Three of them have gaping, bloodied holes where their cheeks or foreheads used to be, the damage done by large caliber rounds just as devastating as Hydra's terrifying energy weapons. The fourth soldier lying underneath them looks strangely incomplete. It takes Steve a heartbeat to understand that the man has no legs. They are no longer there. The air in the close confine of the transporter reeks of burnt skin, blood and viscera. Salty saliva pools under his tongue and he tries to breathe evenly until the threat of throwing up recedes. "God damn it," Jim mutters.

Bucky twitches back with his eyes screwed shut, pressing his back against the transporter's upended floor. A retching sound comes from Gabe.

Monty winces but reaches out to close the leg-less soldier's eyes – and scrambles back when the man starts to scream without a warning.

Steve's heart slams against his chest hard enough to hurt. He doesn't know what to do. He hears a litany of, _"Shit, shit, shit,"_ from Dum-Dum and sees Jim reach for his medical kit with one hand. Jim's other hand is over the wounded man's mouth. The screaming continues, muffled. 

Gabe throws up, heaving up thin bile and spit, then covers his face with his big hands. Monty's hands shake while Bucky's knuckles shine white where he clutches his rifle to his chest. They've all seen worse injuries by now, but not on someone still alive to feel it. In the past weeks, they've been running on cigarettes and coffee and not nearly enough sleep. They're at the end of their tether.

"Listen to me, you need to stop, you're going to give us away." Jim's words direct Steve's attention back to the wounded soldier. Jim still has his hand over the man's mouth.

 _Wounded._ Wounded does not describe this horror. Dying does. Steve doesn't know how Jim can handle it. What can he do?

Jim fixes the man with a hard stare. Steve sees the man's eyes wide open, the whites visible around the iris, the pupils shrunk down to pinpoints. "I'm going to give you something for the pain, but I need both hands for that, so you need to stop screaming."

Steve doesn't know how the man manages – in his state, Steve can't say he would – but he does. Jim nods, takes his hand away, and opens his medical kit. His fingers move with practiced ease, but Steve notices that he doesn't even bother to take out bandages to cover the wounds. All he recovers from the rolled up kit is the morphine syrette – a little tube promising pain relief in field conditions. Jim used to have a set of five, but after a near-brush with death in Romania, he broke the package and handed each of them one, stating that it's better distributed between them. What he hadn't said had been clear.

Steve looks from Jim to the wounded man, and under a layer of dirt and blood, he realizes with a start that he knows the soldier from more than passing. It's Gabriel Padilla – a private Steve played poker with just the night before, sitting in on a game for a couple of hands so Collins' platoon could get to know him. The other guys had teased Padilla over the picture he carried in his breast pocket. He’s from San Diego, from a large family that didn't want him to enlist, and there's a sweetheart waiting for him at home. He's eighteen years old. Eighteen, and he'll never see his family or his sweetheart again. Steve wants to smash something.

Jim takes the morphine syrette from the packaging and removes the plastic hood from the tip. His fingers, slick with blood, slip and it takes him two tries to pull the wire loop that removes the cover. Padilla whimpers but doesn't scream. The metal seal in the tube breaks and Jim has the needle free. He uses set of the scissors to cut open Padilla's jacket and presses the needle into the crook of his arm.

Padilla closes his eyes, relaxes for a few seconds, then pain washes over his face again. "Not working," he whispers, hoarse.

"It's going to take a while to take effect," Jim says, firm but gentle. He pushes from his knees to a crouch and turns to Steve, away from Padilla. "Even once it does hit, one syrette is going to do jack shit for his level of pain. He's going to need at least three."

It's a stupid question, but the only one Steve can seem to get out. "Won't that kill him?"

"Nothing shy of an act of God is going to keep him alive." Jim's voice is definite. "The only question is do we ease his passing or do we let him die in agony?"

Regulations whirl through Steve's mind, along with fragments of Father Michael's sermons back in Brooklyn. "That's murder."

"No," Bucky says, holding out his syrette to Jim. "It's the human thing to do."

Quiet, solemn, Dernier hands over his syrette as well. Dum-Dum follows.

"Three will be enough," Jim says. "Don't give up everything, we don't know how this night will end."

"Sarge," Padilla says and Bucky whirls toward him. The reflection from an energy weapon makes his eyes appear glacier-blue. 

"Did you find my Sarge?" Padilla continues. His face glistens with sweat and tears.

Steve shakes himself and moves closer to Padilla. If there's nothing else he can do, at least he can be there for him in his last hour. "Where did you last see him?" Steve asks.

"Following the LT," Padilla pushes out from between clenched teeth. He takes a couple of breaths and goes on, " The Lieutenant ran. Charlie, Sarge, was trying to find him." Tears well up in his eyes.

Jim pushes the contents of two more of the syrettes into Padilla's arm, then withdraws again, whispering to Steve, "Keep him talking."

Steve swallows around the lump in his throat. "What happened?"

"We were pinned down, but the Lieutenant ordered us to advance. We did… those Jerrieys came… the blue light… Hutcheson and DeCinco just… disappeared." Padilla weeps openly now, the tears tracking through the smears of blood and dirt on his face. "Lieutenant Collins, he just left us, just screamed and ran, and Sarge tried to grab him, but the Lieutenant clocked him one. Sarge stumbled and then that light, that awful blue light got him. It just cut him in half – " 

Dum-Dum ducks his head out and says as he retreats, "We can't stay here. There's a patrol heading this way."

Padilla sobs, the heart-wrenching sound of a child's lost whine in between. Steve sees Bucky, Dum-Dum and Monty share a hard look. He forces himself to ignore what Padilla's story means and he leans forward to close his hand around Padilla's shoulder, squeezing gently. 

"All I could see were his legs," Padilla continues. He stares into nothingness as if his mind is stuck on that picture. "He didn't even scream. There were just his legs, and I couldn't move and then I got hit, too, and I…" Padilla trails off and looks at Steve. "Do you think he can feel them, Captain?" He draws back into himself for a blink of an eye. "I can't move mine. Are they…" He swallows hard. "Are they gone?"

Steve hates lying, he's so utterly, utterly bad at it, but what he says next comes naturally. "Just in pretty bad shape. Gonna get you stitched back up but it'll be a while until you have that dance with your sweetheart."

Padilla smiles and it breaks Steve's heart, but he keeps going. "What was her name again?"

"Maria." Padilla's smile grows wider, and Steve wonders if the morphine is taking effect. "She kept telling me that whenever I say a Hail Mary, I should think of her." He looks at Steve directly. "Will you say a Hail Mary with me, Captain?"

"They're coming closer," Monty warns. "We need to go; we're sitting ducks."

Steve closes his hand around Padilla's shoulder a little tighter. "I'm not leaving him alone until the morphine takes effect." Until he's dead, his brain supplies, and he has to shut down his thoughts. He bends forward and begins to recite, "Hail Mary, full of grace."

"Steve," he hears Bucky say over the sporadic gunfire coming closer and closer. "Come on. There's nothing we can do here."

Steve ignores him. "The Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women."

"Steve," Bucky tries again.

"And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus," Padilla rasps.

"Rogers, for God's sake!" Monty shouts and tries to grab his arm.

Steve shakes him off. "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners." Oh God, and they are sinners, aren't they? All of them, no matter what they pretend to be and do. They're killing this man, this child, and they're calling it mercy and maybe it is mercy, but maybe it's not, maybe he'd still have a chance, despite what Jim says.

"Now and at the hour of our death," Padilla finishes.

A salvo hits the transporter and shreds of torn metal fly past Steve's face, slicing open the skin of his cheek.

"Do you want this to be the hour of _all_ our deaths?" Monty drags Steve to his feet. He looks livid. "This man is dead. If you want to get biblical, then for god's sake, let the dead bury their dead and let's get the bloody hell out of here."

Steve looks at them: Gabe, Dum-Dum, Jim, Frenchie, Monty, and Bucky. His men. Sinners, not saints, just like him. But Steve will be damned if he'll let anything happen to them.

He reaches into Padilla's breast pocket, finds the blood-smeared picture of Maria he'd shown Steve the night before and presses it into Padilla's hand. "She's with you," he says and hates himself.

"Maria," Padilla whispers. "I'm gonna marry that girl." His eyes slip closed on a smile and Steve locks his screaming heart up, and picks up his shield.

He doesn't look back.

***

Steve hears the whimpers and garbled mutters before the others. They've slowed down, Gabe's flashlight flickering so near dead he doesn't need to mask most of it with his hand any longer, but Steve thinks they're close to the rutted track that the half-track brought them up the night before. His men move through the brush and straggling forest near silently, only the rustle of their uniforms and the odd heaved breath sound; even their leather gear doesn't squeak, they spent the day before the mission tending it. Bucky had been a martinet about cleaning and oiling everything leather and anything with a hinge so they could move quietly.

The voice Steve hears has that strange rhythm that marks someone talking to themself. It's almost familiar, like he should know who it is, but too high, too crazed and terrified, alternating between whispers and spiking hysteria. It makes his skin crawl. 

"What the hell is that?" Bucky whispers as he ghosts up to Steve's shoulder. He's just a shadow, a line of heat near Steve's side, a flash of eye white when Steve glances to the side. He wonders at Bucky hearing something so faint, but maybe adrenaline and the silence of the moonless woods have sharpened Bucky's senses.

The voice stops for a few seconds, then starts again, eerie as a ghost, laughing, shrill, then babbling again in something Steve's not sure is English. 

Steve holds up his hand and the others stop in their tracks – they've learned to trust his instincts and his better hearing. One after the other, the flashlights are turned off and Steve can only trust to his superior eyesight and the way the night is turning from pitch-black to a murky pre-dawn indigo between the treetops.

It only takes Steve a couple steps until he reaches the dirt road and there, in the ditch next to the road, lies a person. All cats are grey at night, so Steve can't make out much more than that, only that the man is curled in on itself, and shaking, quivering like a leaf in a storm. Steve recoils when he breathes in the stench of vomit and piss.

"Hey," he tries. He can't make himself reach out.

The muttering stops just as the shaking begins. 

Steve adopts a soothing tone and says, "Hey, it's okay, we're not here to hurt you." He checks the surrounding area for a possible ambush, but there are no other noises, and they're nearly six miles away from the Hydra lab. This would be too elaborate a trap to set, since the spot where they'd leave the forest would be impossible to predict.

He turns and gives the others the all-clear sign. Soon after, he hears movement from the forest.

Another shrill laugh escapes from the man in the ditch.

He crouches next to the ditch. "What's your name?" 

"Collins, Lieutenant, O-1677195," the man says, sounding normal for a few seconds. Until he continues, "Or maybe it was 766159? 1596671?" That shrill laughter again. "I should remember but the number is just too fucking long." He convulses in hysterical chortles that send icy chills down Steve's spine.

Steve straightens and takes two steps back, almost colliding with Bucky. 

"What?" Bucky asks. "Who is it?"

Steve shakes his head, trying to fight his unease. "Collins."

"Collins?" Monty echoes from his other side. "So the bloody swine did run."

"We don't know that," Steve tries to placate, but he does know it, and so do they. One thing he didn't smell when he crouched next to Collins: cordite. Collins never fired his weapon and wasn't even close enough to catch any blowback from his men opening fire.

"One way or another, he can't stay here," Monty points out. He sounds cold. 

The sun's not over the horizon yet but it's light enough that Steve can make out Monty's face and he doesn't like the hard set around Monty's mouth.

Dum-Dum moves first. "Get up," he says, taking a step toward the ditch.

Collins cowers and curls in on himself.

"Come on, move," Gabe joins in as well. 

Collins just rocks back and forth, leaves rustling on in the dirty snow and ice at the bottom of the ditch as he does.

In the far distance, Steve hears the rumbling engine of a halftrack, but Bucky's the one who says, "Pick up's approaching."

"I don't hear anything," Dum-Dum says.

"That's because your own snoring's turned you deaf," Bucky replies and moves toward Collins. "Get up," he says and reaches for Collins's arm. He pulls a face when he breathes in but doesn't recoil. 

Collins is limp at first, but as soon as Bucky puts some muscle to pulling him up, it's like a switch is flipped. Collins pushes Bucky back, screaming, "I'm not going back, I'm not going back there," and when Bucky snarls and grabs his arm again, Collins lashes out. He fights like a terrified, cornered alley cat: scratches, kicks, bites, hisses. The whites of his eyes show around his iris and flecks of saliva fly from his mouth. Steve is too horrified to move.

Bucky doesn't have to ask for help, though: Gabe, Dernier, Monty and Dum-Dum jump into the ditch with him, strong-arming Collins up to the ground and into the middle of the dirt road face down. They look disgusted and the hard punches they use to subdue Collins are rough, harder than they need to be.

"Mad as a bag of ferrets," Monty mutters.

Dernier draws back his boot like he means to kick Collins. Steve has to intervene then. "Guys, come on, he's got the message." 

Collins is on his hands and knees now, panting, sobbing, and he looks so pathetically young that Steve's heart clenches. It reminds him too much of himself in the same situation – minus the sobbing, he'd never give bullies that satisfaction, no matter how much he'd felt like crying – on the ground with several large, looming shadows around him. "Stop intimidating him."

Bucky, breathing heavily and wiping blood from a split lip, whirls toward Steve with a snarl. "He ran," he half-shouts, "the shit ran and left his men to die covering his ass!" He points at Collins, rage making his normally steady trigger hand shake. "You think it's a coincidence the bastard is here, at the rendezvous point, giving us the madman spiel? Probably figured we'd died too, was going to be the hero lone survivor."

Dum-Dum and Dernier nod, both standing with their arms crossed over their chests. 

"Sarge's got a point," Gabe says.

The only one staying in the background is Jim and even he looks ready to kick Collins in the ribs rather than help him get up.

"He's not faking it," Steve insists. "Can't you see that he's terrified?" Bucky's judgment is usually better than this. Steve's horrified by this cold condemning side of Bucky.

"He's an officer, Steve," Monty cuts in. "He doesn't get to fall apart. Everyone is terrified, but there are lives that depend on him."

"He's barely twenty-one!" Steve says, raising his voice because how can they not see? This man, this kid there on the ground, isn't faking, he's having a full-on breakdown. Besides, if someone this young isn't allowed to break, then who is? It feels like there's a lump of ice in his stomach.

"Padilla was younger," Monty points out, "and he didn't run." 

"Be better if they'd have shot him," Dum-Dum mutters under his breath. He glares at Collins.

"If my first contact with real war had been with anyone else besides all of you, that – " Steve looks down at Collins, " – could have been me." He clenches his hands around the handle of his shield just to have something to occupy them. "I went into this war with the idea of it being glorious and if you hadn't set my head straight – "

"You've never run from a fight in your life, Steve. Even when your body couldn't handle it, you piled in. You never gave a damn." Bucky shakes his head with a harsh, unamused laugh. "Look at what happened with Padilla. Now, look at this sorry excuse for a man." He nudges Collins with his foot, rough but not cruel. Steve steps forward nevertheless and Bucky gives him a look that says, _See_? "You'll always jump in front of anyone you think needs protecting. You'll never leave a man behind. It's not in your damn fool nature."

"Then you understand why I can't just watch you manhandle him."

"I understand." Bucky nods. "Doesn't mean I agree or approve." He straightens his shoulders and looks toward the road. "Track's almost here."

***

"That shocked you, didn't it?" Monty says over the rumbling of the halftrack's diesel engine.

"I'm not used to lose-lose situations," Steve replies. He's always believed there is a solution to any dilemma.

"You're not used to Sarge being a soldier," Monty says and damn if he doesn't hit a square bull's eye with that. "You need to work on your poker face around that boy." Monty smiles, but it's sad, brittle. "You came into this circus late, Steve, but you need to understand that sergeants and NCOs like Barnes, more than even officers, have to harden themselves."

Monty catches his frown and answers without Steve having to ask. "It took me a while to grasp it as well, but one bollocksed mission under a Major – who reminds me of that fool Cantrell – about two years ago made me understand it with a nasty clarity. They're expected to follow the officer's orders, not their better instincts. Sarge, there, only gives you backtalk because you're friends. And I think you know that he never does it before anyone but us. If you were any other officer, trust me, he wouldn't question you the way he does sometimes."

"Why?"

Monty gives a surprised smile that turns sad again far too quickly. "Because it's their job to follow orders. Good and bad. And in order to do that, they have to harden themselves." 

Steve tries to articulate the thoughts that roll like tumbleweed through his head but can't grab hold of one long enough to manage a coherent sentence. 

"I know you are an idealist, Steve, but a soldier, a real soldier, can't be. Not and be any kind of good soldier."

That hurts. He has ideals. He knows it. Everyone knows it. Up until now, he'd thought that they were his biggest asset. Does Monty really think him a bad soldier because of them?

Monty catches the way Steve's face falls. The left corner of his mouth kicks up a little higher than the right. "Cheer up," he says. "The usual rules don't apply to you. Naturally."

"So what you're saying is that it's necessary to lose any kind of empathy, any ideals about what's right and wrong, in order to be a good soldier."

Monty sighs. "You didn't listen at all, did you?"

Steve crosses his arms in front of him, needing to cover his underbelly from the blow that's about to come. It's worse somehow because he knows that Monty's right. He deserves his scorn.

"This isn't about being a good soldier, is it?" Monty asks. He answer his own question. "This is about Barnes."

Steve stares out over the side of the transport at the landscape moving past them, trees blurring in the fall of the slushy snow. Monty's right, isn't he? Steve understands why the Commandos are doing what they're doing, he understands the necessities of war, even if he doesn't like them, but Bucky … The Bucky in Steve's head is different from them. He's not a soldier. He's a fighter for the good fight. Just like Steve. Like they've always been.

"All right, let's play pretend then," Monty continues, misinterpreting Steve's silence. "A soldier, Steve, can be ethical, moral even, good. He cannot be an idealist. If they don't armor themselves against doing what they're commanded to do, they will all end up like Collins."

Steve stays silent, letting Monty's words percolate in his mind. 

Eventually, he turns back to Monty. "Do you…" he hates finishing the thought, the question, so he lowers his voice. "Do you think we should have left him behind?"

Monty looks out toward the pale winter sun that's creeping over the horizon in the distance. "You never went to officer's training, did you?"

Steve tenses. "No." His voice sounds defensive to his own ears. "What does that have to do with it?"

"Because you likely wouldn't ask yourself that question if you had."

"What?"

"As an officer fresh out of training, you wouldn't hesitate, wouldn't think twice about bringing him back to base. It's in the rules. As the person you are…" Monty gives him a half-smile that is somewhere between pity and acceptance. "You've started to wonder if it would have been kinder to leave him behind, haven't you?"

"What do you mean?"

"What do you think is going to happen back in camp, Steve?"

Steve knows the rules. A court-martial is inevitable. "He was out of his mind."

Monty's face hardens. "And he cost all of his men their lives."

***

The sun is rising as they roll into the basecamp, but it's still cold and their breath puffs out into the air, evanescent in the bright and ephemeral morning.

The halftrack's shocks were already bad, but the holes in the dirt road left by a harsh winter and a quick succession of thaw and fresh frost, destroy whatever was left of them. Some of the ruts are deep enough to threaten to throw one of the rear tracks. The driver steers snake-like line to avoid the worst of them, and between Gabe and Dum-Dum, bound, Collins sways with the movement like a puppet whose strings have been cut. 

Gabe's face isn't as expressionless as Bucky's; he's grim, as well as silent, but at least he returns Steve's look. Bucky doesn't. He stares past Collins, ignoring Steve and even Morita when Jim tries to talk to him. 

Dum-Dum looks at Steve's knees, then squeezes his eyes shut. Beside him, Dernier lowers his head and starts to glide a rosary between his fingers, pointedly looking away. Steve furrows his brow until he looks at his uniform pants. They're splattered with mud and reddish-brown at the knees. 

Padilla's blood.

Dernier, he understands, is whispering prayers for the dead.

One after the other, he stares at Bucky's locked jaw, his white knuckles, at the tear-tracks on Collin's filthy face, at Monty, who looks so exhausted that Steve thinks that one more jolt will reduce Monty's bones to powder. He hears the sound of Dum-Dum's teeth grinding behind the sound of the coughing diesel motor and the rosary's clicks, the low hum of a spiritual under Gabe's breath, and Collins whispering to himself. For a few, tense seconds, Steve wonders what the hell they're doing here and can't breathe. The enormity of it hits him, unexpected, like a punch to the gut: These men will follow him into hell – and today, they have. Does he have it in him to lead them out of it, too?

He remembers Monty pulling him back from wading forward into firefight after they found Humlov dead. _"We'll only get out of here if we work together as a team,"_ he'd said.

He did it back on the trawler as well, gone against their experience, trying to prove that he can both be a leader and a fighter and do the right thing. As he watches his men now, Steve realizes that he's proving himself worthy to himself on their backs. The heat of shame climbs into his face despite the bitter cold.

When they get him off the truck, Steve smells Collins again, the reek of sweat and piss and puke, all spreading from him like poison gas. Gabe and Dum-Dum each hold on to one of Collins' arms, dropping out of the halftrack and onto their feet. They hold Collins up when his knees fold and he whimpers, but Steve sees that their hands have a tight but not cruel hold on his lanky arms. They're trying to hide how badly off he is, trying to give him some kind of dignity. The other Commandos create a protective half circle behind them. 

The sun is higher now, bright and blinding in a cloudless, pale blue sky. The air is still, breezeless, frozen. In the tire ruts, puddles of muddy water still have ice on them. 

The basecamp is familiar, almost comforting – khaki-colored tents draped with dirty camouflage netting, plumes of smoke from fires, paths already worn between the tents, even the line of latrines; it's the same everywhere the army stops. The air smells of wet burning pine, diesel fumes, and the latrines. Below that, things only his enhanced sense of smell lets him pick up – the smell of greasy hair and unwashed male bodies, cigarettes, and the scents of boiling cabbage and potatoes. Though unpleasant, it's normal and Steve's stomach settles, an ease that's aided by Bucky closing up to him and walking just one step behind him.

Monty comes up on his other side, and a look back shows him Dernier and Morita bringing up the rear. All together, the Commandos shield Collins from view.

A tent canvas is whipped back with a crack.

Major Cantrell, camp commander, strides out. His boots scrunch-squelch over the frost-covered mud. Cantrell sticks out. He is spit-polished and with perfect creases on his ironed uniform. His short hair is slicked back, and his moustache perfectly combed and in place. It reminds Steve of Clark Gable. Irrationally, he wonders if Cantrell waxed the damn thing, because Dum-Dum's never looks this perfect, despite all the considerable care he puts into maintaining it. He's as out of place in the muddy camp as man heading for the opera who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a rugby match. 

Cantrell walks a few steps then waits for Steve and his men to come to him. Once they have, he gives the state of Steve's uniform a once-over and his mouth turns down in distaste.

"Captain," he says, his voice clipped. 

"Sir," Steve answers with a half-hearted salute. 

Cantrell accepts it with a dismissive gesture and looks past Steve. His eyebrows draw together.

"What's this?"

"Sir?"

"Where's Humlov? Where's the rest of Collin's platoon?"

Steve clears his throat and straightens his shoulders, which makes him tower over Cantrell by several inches. "Humlov was KIA." The hole in Humlov's head flashes in front of his mind's eye and he swallows. "The platoon was wiped out by Hydra."

Cantrell – visibly uncomfortable with Steve being taller than him – narrows his eyes. "Headquarters gave your bunch of misfits one simple order, _Captain_ ," the stress Cantrell puts on Steve's rank is derisive. It reminds Steve that, even though the Commandos are special ops, Cantrell isn't his commanding officer, he still outranks Steve. "Just one. And you're telling me you lost an _entire platoon_? I know you won your _rank_ ," Cantrell actually uses air-quotes, "at a travelling circus, may I remind you that there are twenty-four men in that platoon?"

Steve balls his hands into fists at his sides. "With all due respect, sir, there was nothing we could do. The intel was incomplete. They walked into a meat grinder."

"Wasn't there?" Cantrell's voice is silky. "Or are you so damn hot to hit Hydra that you can't even be trusted to bring back a prisoner alive?" He leans in so close that Steve can see a nick where Cantrell shaved this morning. Steve concentrates on the line of zits along Cantrell's hairline to breathe through his anger at the accusation. He hears Dernier grind his teeth, proving that he understands much more than he lets on. "A prisoner," flecks of saliva hit Steve's face, "with critical information for the war effort in the Mediterranean!" 

Steve unclenches his jaw to push his reply out. "That's not what happened, sir." He bites back on sharper words, because if there's one thing he's learned by now, it's that it won't do his team any good to antagonize a higher-ranking officer, no matter how much of a pompous asshole he may be.

"Then what did happen, _Captain_?" Cantrell leans back and rests his hands on his hips, hand brushing over the butt of his revolver. It's not standard issue. The butt gleams, inlaid with the pale white of mother of pearl. 

"I never wanted the platoon along, sir," Steve says, fighting to keep his voice level. "If you recall, I suggested we go in covertly." Cantrell shouldn't have even known Humlov was their target; he didn't need to know.

"Covert." Cantrell spits next to Steve's boots. "Is Captain America too good for combat? Just special ops, huh, in an out quickly, run when there's danger?" From the corner of his eye, he sees Bucky taking a step forward and it's the only thing that makes Steve keep his mouth shut. "A wannabe, a Brit, a frog-eater, a nigger and a God damn Jap," Cantrell says, shaking his head and sneering. Monty mutters a curse under his breath, quiet enough that only Steve hears it. The subdued creaking noise is Bucky clenching his hand around his rifle. "I should have known," Cantrell continues with a supremacy in his voice that makes Steve want to knock his teeth back in his throat, "that none of you could be expected to fight like actual men. That, _Captain_ , is exactly the reason I sent the platoon with you."

Before Steve can unclench his jaw to reply, Cantrell snaps, "Collins!" and steps around Steve. "Report!"

Steve turns and watches Cantrell take in Collins' filthy uniform, wrinkle his nose at the reek of vomit and piss coming off Collins, and then take a step back, looking disgusted. "We're surrounded by miles and miles of forest, couldn't you find a god damn tree to piss against instead of disgracing your uniform like that?" Cantrell shouts. "Where are your men?"

Collins looks at the ground, quivering hard enough Gabe and Dum-Dum have to adjust their hold on him. Steve picks up the barely there siss of urination before he smells the sharp stench of ammonia. A steaming puddle appears around Collins' feet.

Steve fights a wince. 

Cantrell takes another disgusted step back, his face turning livid. "You're a disgrace to your uniform, Lieutenant. Report. Now."

"There was no time, no time, no time," Collins begins to chant. His receding chin quivers. Tears roll down his dirty cheeks, revealing freckles. 

A muscle in Cantrell's jaw jumps. "Pull yourself together and report, soldier!" 

"You," he snaps at Gabe and Dum-Dum. "Let go of him."

Collins folds as soon as Gabe and Dum-Dum release him; his thin legs no longer support him. He's not quite as skinny as Steve used to be, but definitely close, the picture made weirder because he is tall. "Nothing but blue light," he whimpers, "killing them all."

"What happened to your platoon, Lieutenant?"

"Had to, had to, had to," Collins mutters, rocking back and forth in the mud. "Had to get away. All dead, all dying." He runs his hands through his dirty blond hair, tearing at the greasy curls. "The weapons, those weapons from hell, didn't want to, couldn't." He takes a gulping breath and continues, near toneless. "The noise, people just cut in half, their blood, oh, God, there was so much blood." The rocking back and forth gets worse, Collins is tearing out strands of hair now, scratching bloody gouges into his scalp. "Sergeant Clarke's head…" 

Collins raises his head and stares at Steve. What Steve sees in his large hazel eyes is the hair-raising brightness of madness. "Clarke's head was split open like a coconut. Like a damn coconut, you see?" He begins to scrub his hands over his arms as though trying to clean himself. The soldiers lingering nearby stop even pretending they're working and stare openly. A hush lies over the entire camp. Collins' muttering and whimpering must carry into the very last corner of the last tent.

"Blood all over me, his blood and his brain and his mouth was still screaming and the other half was just gone, oh, God, I had to get away, get it off." 

Collins tries to grab Cantrell's boots to press his forehead against them like a dog knowing it has done wrong by its master. The steaming puddle around him suggests that he pissed himself again. Cantrell's face darkens in disgust. 

"Couldn't think, couldn't think. Couldn't breathe. Told them to advance, but I couldn't, I couldn't. I had to get away." Collins voice begins to rise into a screech. _"I had to!_ No one, no one, no one said it was this way, why did no one say it was going to be this – "

A cracking slap across the face stops Collins' rant. "Not another word," Cantrell orders.

He turns to Steve, slowly. "Did this man run while his platoon was under fire, Captain? Did he desert?"

Steve squares his shoulders. "I can't say, sir."

"You can't or you won't?"

He doesn't have a poker face and he can't lie worth shit, but it's easy to stick with the truth. "I can't, sir. I wasn't there."

Cantrell glares at the other Commandos, then his glare stops at Bucky. "Sergeant Barnes!"

"Sir." 

Steve hates how tired, how resigned Bucky's voice sounds. 

"Can you tell me what your commanding officer won't?"

It's a rhetorical question. Cantrell knows it. Bucky does, too.

"He's right, sir," Bucky says. In the gleaming sunlight, he looks pale, washed out; the rings under his eyes are dark and bruised-looking. "We weren't present."

"But?"

"We found one of his men." Bucky covers his sway of exhaustion by shifting his rifle, the giveaway so slight Steve is sure he's the only one who picks up on it.

"Full report, Sergeant, I'm not going to ask again."

Steve steps forward, between Bucky and Cantrell. He's not going to have Bucky do Steve's job. Not here. Not again. "Private Padilla said that Lieutenant Collins panicked." The words are like acid in his throat. He knows what they'll mean for Collins.

"Found your voice again, _Captain_?"

Steve bites his tongue hard.

"Collins!" The two syllables are like gunshots. Cantrell juts his chin forward at Collins like an attack dog. "Did you get my men killed, you useless sack of shit?"

Collins' reply is a garbled mess of meaningless words and sobs.

"Did or did this man not display cowardice under fire?" Cantrell barks, turning back to Steve. "Did he or did he not desert?"

"Faced with circumstances that were beyond extreme, he reacted like a human being suffering from shellshock."

Cantrell whirls back to Collins. He vibrates with fury. "Do you think you're getting away with this?" he snarls. "Do you think that because you convinced America's Golden Boy here that you've lost your marbles that you now get to go back to a hospital with fucking shellshock when my men are all _dead because you left them_?" Flecks of saliva spray from Cantrell's mouth and he looks no better than Collins. His hand, curled around the butt of his revolver, shakes.

Collins tries to scramble back on his ass, tries to seek refuge behind Dum-Dum. Gabe and Dum-Dum shift away from him, back toward Dernier and Morita, leaving Collins alone in the mud. Their faces reflect both distaste and that instinctive avoidance of the insane. 

Cantrell marches up to Collins and kicks him, sharp and fast. "Get up," Cantrell yells. "Get up and act like a God damn man!"

Collins begins to weep like a child; a lost, frightened noise that sounds wrong from a grown man. It chills Steve to the bones.

"Sir," Steve tries to interject. "He didn't know what he was doing."

Cantrell ignores him and aims another kick at Collins.

"Couldn't go back in there," Collins howls against his drawn up knees. He's protecting his head with his hands.

If Cantrell keeps kicking him, Collins will end up with broken ribs or worse. 

Steve looks around for another officer besides himself and Monty, someone, anyone from Cantrell's staff who might step up to Cantrell and snap him out of his rage. Someone to stop him. All the men around them just stare with the morbid, hungry curiosity that must have brought the Romans to the Coliseum. No one is going to do anything. 

"There will be no 'shellshock' under _my_ command and no god damn deserters." Cantrell drew the pearl-handled revolver and aimed it at Collins. "Lieutenant Charles Collins, I find you guilty of misbehavior before the enemy and of desertion to avoid hazardous duty under Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and sentence you to death."

"Please, please, please," Collins whimpers. "I had to get away, don't you see, everyone was dying, I couldn't – "

Cantrell raises his arm and straightens it into a classic dueling pose. Collins keeps babbling, but the blood rushes too loud in Steve's ears to understand what he's saying. Cantrell can't do this. Cold sweat breaks out along Steve's back. There needs to be a court martial, a prosecutor, Collins needs a defense counsel, the Articles of War demand a hearing, a unanimous vote by all the members of the court-martial, before a death sentence is executed. The decision needs to be reviewed first, Cantrell can't, he just _can't_. 

"Sir, you can't –"

Bucky's hand bites into his arm, stopping him.

"Watch me," Cantrell says and pulls the trigger.

The single shot echoes through the shocked silent camp.

***

Even after the body is taken away, the evidence removed, and his team given the same beat up M3 halftrack to get to their pick-up point, Collins' murder still plays in front of his mind's eye, making Steve relive the helplessness, leaving him with the knowledge that he should have done something to stop it.

He stops Monty from climbing in the back of the track and pulls him to the side. "We can't just leave. Cantrell just killed that man ‒ "

"Executed." Monty's words are sharp as a dagger. "Write your report, Steve. Send it up the line. That's all you can do." He adds a quiet, "It was never going to end well for him."

Steve lets go of Monty and catches the way Jim and Gabe look at him from the track's bed. Behind them, in the near-darkness under the dirty khaki tarp, Dum-Dum and Bucky are leaning against the driver's cabin with their eyes closed. Maybe they're asleep. Maybe they just don't want to get in on the argument. 

He gives their driver the sign to start the motor and it coughs into life. Monty gets up on the truck's bed and gives Steve an unnecessary hand up – a peace offering, maybe. Steve takes it.

It's hard to look at the basecamp as they rattle out of it; he keeps expecting to see Collins' body somewhere. Or maybe the man's ghost staring from behind one of the tents.

What he sees instead is a group of soldiers trying to dig a hole in the frozen ground, half a mile outside of the camp. Steve squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them again, he notices a stain on his uniform. Collins' blood has mixed with Padilla's.

His team's resigned acceptance more than anything that silenced Steve earlier, but he chokes on that silence now. Unspoken words use up the air he needs to breathe.

"What the hell are we doing here?" It's not a question he can ask any of the other guys, not even if they were awake to listen, not when he's supposed to be their leader. Bucky would understand, but Bucky seems to be asleep just like the others. Monty, being the second highest in command, and also the only one of his team who's awake, is his only option. "Why couldn't I stop Cantrell?" He runs both hands through his hair, barely resisting the urge to tear at the strands. "I've always fought for those who were weaker, why did I freeze back there?"

"What were you going to do? Jump in front of the bullet?" Monty's words are punctuated by the tarp flapping in the slipstream.

The road behind them blurs. "I could have, should have – "

"Steve," Monty reaches for his upper arms, fingers biting into Steve's muscles, grounding him. Their knees bump. "Sometimes you have to follow orders, even when you think they're wrong, even when you think they're bad."

Steve looks at Monty, desperately seeking a way to understand what he can't. "How?"

"By listening, by learning." Monty lets go of Steve and his face falls, reflecting a raw grief Steve has never seen on him before. "By accepting that sometimes, the sacrifice you have to make is that you don't get to be the sacrifice."

Monty's words sound odd – not as if this is something he's learned from a training session. It distracts Steve from his own rapidly spiraling thoughts. "Did you – "Steve trails off, not knowing how to word the question without coming across as rude or nosy.

"Yes." Monty pulls his cap off his head and runs his thumb over the badge. "The camp…" He looks down at the burgundy wool of his cap. "Things happened there that no officers' training ever prepared me for." His words almost get drowned in the noise of the engine and the flapping of the tarp. "They do tell you that when you get captured as an officer, it is your responsibility to stay alive." He traces his index finger around the cap badge. "You have to be in command and take care of the other POWs so you can lead them to an escape, or failing that, to hold them together and hold out for a rescue." Monty's laugh is void of humor. "Even if you know that it's not coming."

Steve wants to ask hundreds of questions, but for once, he manages to stay quiet, because he can tell from Monty's body language that he's never told this story to anyone before.

"Do you know how Bucky got taken by Zola?"

Steve shakes his head. Bucky never talked to him about Zola and Steve never asked. Was it cowardice or was he just too sure that Bucky was okay?

"They kept us in those cages when we weren't working. You form bonds in such tight quarters, it's inevitable. Not all of it pretty, and hell, I wanted to smash in Dernier and Dugan's heads a couple of times, but you're all in the same bloody boat and you start to care for what happens to each other." Another one of those mirthless smiles. "So when the guards started to pick this lad from Brooklyn, this strong and naive kid who cried for his mother in his sleep every night, to be taken to the wing that no one came back from, it was Bucky who stepped forward to stop them from taking him. Not me. Said he was stronger. The better choice." Monty draws a deep breath. "We all knew what that meant." He bunches his cap in his hands. His knuckles are white. "Zola wouldn't have wanted Jones and Morita, Dernier was too small and Dugan too old, judging by the people the guards snatched before. I should have been the one who did something. But I couldn't." Monty runs a hand over his forehead as if chasing away the memory. "I had to stay alive."

Steve's throat clicks as he swallows.

When Monty looks up a Steve, it's as if he's seeking absolution. "What I'm trying to say is …Sometimes, your sacrifice is carrying the guilt of sacrificing your men."

Monty let Bucky walk into hell. Steve's not sure if he can forgive Monty that. That scares him. If it had been anyone else... But it wasn't.

***

Bomb craters pockmark one end of the airfield, making landing and take-off a gamble. The tower leans half in ruins and the maintenance building is no more than four rubble-filled walls without a roof. There are no hangars.

No one in their right mind would expect a plane to land here. Just as well that they have Stark picking them up in a civilian plane once night has fallen.

It feels as if Steve can breathe freely for the first time in hours once the halftrack pulls away. Gabe, Jim, Dernier, Monty and Dum-Dum share one look, then start putting their packs against the wall in the sunny south side of the building. Dum-Dum begins to snore only minutes after he sits down. Steve envies him the ability to fall asleep anytime, anywhere.

Bucky seats himself on a pile of rubble a little ways off, with a burning cigarette between his fingers. It's the third one Steve has seen him light up since they got here and it makes him frown. Bucky never used to smoke.

Seeing Bucky by himself is a relief. Talking to Monty earlier opened Steve's mind, made him understand things he never understood before, but Monty's confession, its implication, rattled him. He needs to be close to Bucky now, to take solace in still having him. Bucky will understand, and even if he doesn't, he'll listen, in a way that no one else can. Steve guides his steps over to where Bucky sits and perches on a neighboring piece of stone.

Bucky gives him a look from the corner of his eyes but doesn't greet him. He doesn't have to. They've never needed formalities between them. 

Steve sits still for a while, then it begins to spill out of him, all of it, the shock, the dismay, the outrage over what Cantrell did. He rants and rants and Bucky just sits there, looking out over the airfield.

"I can't stop thinking... What if it had been one of the Commandos?" The words open a floodgate of pictures and his imagination, always too vivid, superimposes Collins' picture with another that has Steve breathing against a scream. "God, Bucky, if it had been you in Collins' place, I would have – "

"Shut up, Steve. Just shut up." Bucky barely raises his voice and he sounds incredibly tired, as if he doesn't even have any hope that Steve will heed his words. 

Steve snaps his mouth shut. Bucky has never once shot him down this way before.

Bucky gets up and puts a few feet of space between them. After a breath, he sits down on an old tyre, jerkily, lacking his usual grace. He cradles his head in his hands, back bowed, and stays that way, only moving once to lace his fingers together at the back of his head. His head hangs, forehead nearly touching his knees.

Steve feels as if Bucky socked him in the stomach. He's hit with the realization that he doesn't know Bucky anymore, not like he used to. He doesn't know what Bucky is thinking. He doesn't know why Bucky said that. It's like there's a high wall between them now, one he's unable to climb over or walk around or break down, not even with all his new strength. All he can do is stare at Bucky, who has raised his head again and is lighting another cigarette. 

Pulling the fumes he hated before the war into his lungs – too deep, too desperate – Bucky's cheeks hollow, his chapped lips pursing around the end. He holds his breath, holds the smoke in his lungs, until Steve thinks he must be choking on it, then exhales; slowly, measured, the smoke trickling from his nostrils, obscuring the smear of dirt on his cheekbone. The breeze ruffles his hair and carries the smoke with it, revealing Bucky's eyes half-closed, his lashes spiky with… God, are those tears?

Steve hurts as if someone were trying to carve his heart out of his body. He wants to walk over to Bucky, to touch him, to put his arm around him and pull him to his side, but he can't move. He feels the rift between them like an abyss he doesn't have the strength to jump across. He doesn't know how to comfort Bucky anymore when he always knew before.

Bucky's hurting, hurting more than Steve imagined, but Steve can't mend what's broken between them, because the glue that always held them together is already gone. They no longer share everything. Steve has his secrets and Bucky has his and they're… drifting apart. There never was a time when they didn't talk to one another. Now it seems that they no longer know where to start.

The reek of cigarette smoke and aviation fuel fills his lungs and leaves him sick to his stomach. He thinks of Padilla, of Collins. Hates himself for wishing Monty had never told him about the camp, because it's too easy to put the blame on Monty. Hates that he's wondering what Bucky won't tell him. His eyes sting with tears. Bucky sits in the long shadows, already half cast in darkness. 

Turns out that the war Steve always dreamt of going to breaks more than just bodies.


	5. May 1944, Germany

**May 1944, Germany**

Everything goes right. They sabotage the partially-built Hydra weapons factory and before anyone can see them, they're out under the cover of darkness. In and out, stealthy, quick and easy. No one will know they were there, yet those Hydra weapons will never function. Bucky doesn't say _I told you so_ , but Steve can hear him think it loud and clear. He doesn't begrudge him his moral victory, because Bucky's plan was a good one, and it _is_ nice to have everything run smoothly and not have to run from explosions and gunfire. Dernier looks a bit disappointed, so Steve promises him that he can blow something up again soon.

They have nothing to do but wait out the day at the farm of a resistance friendly family. The farm is so secluded there are no Hydra or general soldiers nearby and a plane landing on the concealed landing strip out in the family's hay field won't be heard or seen. The Dittmann family has been hiding escaped political prisoners and spies for years now, providing an extraction point deep behind the front lines where the Germans don't expect it. 

After dark, they'll trundle the hay bales off the field, radio in and put out landing lights. The SSR plane will land, they'll load up, and fly back to England with a quick refueling stop in France. Easy as pie, just like the mission.

It's been a crazy year so far. Steve appreciates the moment of respite and he can tell that the other Commandos do too.

Jim volunteers to fix the Dittmann's broken radio and is invited inside, while in the barn, Dum-Dum tries to sweet-talk the engine of an old tractor back to life under the watchful eyes of the family's teenaged sons, Martin and Arthur. 

Lise Dittmann, the mother, is Dernier's height; a full-figured woman with smiles that are tinged with sadness. Her strong hands and arms are scratched by farm work and her freckled face with the squint-lines around the eyes is careworn but kind. Despite being no older than thirty-six, strands of grey weave through brown hair. When they arrive at the farm, she is the one who sets them up with breakfast and doesn't look the least bit surprised at their arrival. She operates both the farm and the resistance cell, clearly. According to the SSR briefing, her husband was forced to work at and died 'accidentally' sabotaging the same Hydra factory the Commandos just targeted.

She shoos the little girls – Johanna and Marie – out of her kitchen into the courtyard. A smudge of flour on her cheek makes Steve smile. "Nehmt die Soldaten mit und geht Erdbeeren pflücken!" she orders and gives Bucky and Dernier a pleading look. "Tun Sie mir den Gefallen, das Essen wird sonst nie fertig." 

Dernier, who knows a little German, translates for Bucky that she wants them to get the girls out of the kitchen and would like them to go and pick strawberries. 

Bucky nods and smiles and reaches out a hand for the taller of the girls, Johanna, an eleven-year-old with straight, dirty blond hair that keeps falling in her eyes despite the pins trying to hold it back. She slides her hand into his and tugs him away. 

Dernier picks up the younger girl, four-year-old Marie, settles her on his hip and follows Bucky, singing a French song to her. Marie giggles when he tickles her side.

A wiry, quiet man of about fifty-five walks out of the barn carrying a scythe slung over his hunched shoulder. Bernhardt Dittmann is the only man on the farm after his son, the children's father. He looks drained by hard work and rheumatism; Steve doesn't hesitate to ask if he needs help.

Gabe translates and a surprised smile lights up Bernhardt's weather-worn face. He accepts their offer happily, and provides Steve, Gabe and Monty with scythes and rakes before he sets off toward the hay meadow. The hot sunshine on their shoulders soon gives Steve a wistful appreciation for the huge old Linden tree that shades the farmhouse's cobblestoned courtyard with its branches. 

Cutting hay is a mundane task, but something Steve, as a city boy, has never done before, so, of course, he bumbles miserably. Bernhardt laughs and says something in German that sets Gabe snickering. He replies something to Bernhardt, who looks at Steve and Monty and only laughs harder. Gabe refuses to translate and Bernhardt takes pity on them and shows them how it's done right. "Locker aus dem Handgelenk," he explains slowly, showing Steve what he means when Steve doesn't understand.

After a while, both get easier – using the scythe and understanding what Bernhardt says from context.

Laughter drifts over to them from the strawberry field, high-pitched giggles and deeper chuckles. A bilingual duet of _Frere Jacques_ keeps being repeated, the childish soprano meshing with a familiar tenor, interrupted by Marie's clear voice stating "Nein, nein, du singst das falsch!"

Gabe translates under his voice and they all laugh, imagining Dernier's mock-put-out face.

Bernhardt leans on his upturned scythe and smiles, too. All he's missing is the long black cloak. Steve shakes his head to distract himself from the picture and gets back to raking the hay. 

Johanna runs past them with a basket full of strawberries once, gets called by her grandfather, and returns with a sheepish smile, offering them one each. They're warm from the sun and the sand on them grates between Steve's teeth, but they're ripe and just the right mixture of sweet and tart so he has to bite back on a groan of delight as he swallows. It's been forever since he last had strawberries, probably not since before his mother died.

"Geh, deine Mutter braucht die Erdbeeren für den Nachtisch," Bernhardt shoos her off the field and toward the house.

"Dessert," Gabe explains and Steve feels the grin stretch his face wide.

"Erst die Arbeit, dann das Vergnügen," Bernhardt admonishes when he sees Steve's reaction. 

"Work first, dinner later," Gabe translates.

Bernhardt looks at Johanna skipping over the cobblestones and smiles, though. He says something to Gabe under his breath.

"He says that he doesn't tell her, but his daughter-in-law is an even better cook than his wife was."

Johanna dashes past them again. Her dark blonde hair has slipped its pins and flies behind her. She's carrying another, larger wicker basket. When she reaches the strawberry field, Steve hears faked groans and laughs. "Erst die Arbeit, dann das Vergnügen," he repeats, trying to get as close to Bernhardt's pronunciation as possible.

Gabe nearly falls over laughing and Bernhardt bites back on a chuckle. Steve shrugs and smiles, too. It was worth a try.

Together, they finish mowing the meadow about half an hour later and though they're used to pushing themselves physically, the surprisingly hard work leaves them all hungry.

As if on cue, a small but piercing bell sounds from the farm.

"Mittagessen," Bernhardt states and Steve doesn't need Gabe to translate what the word means. Lunch. His stomach rumbles approvingly.

"I'll get the others," Steve says and points toward the strawberry field.

Monty nods toward the farm. "We'll go ahead and wash." He's still careful around Steve since his confession. 

Steve, on his part, has decided to forget that part of their talk ever happened. It makes it easier, especially since he _likes_ Monty. "Good idea," he agrees. Accepting the Dittmanns' hospitality covered in dust, bits of grass, and reeking of sweat would be rude. He wipes sweat off his upper lip with the back of his hand and feels two days' worth of stubble bristle. Shaving goes on the list of things to do before he sits at the lunch table.

When he reaches the strawberry field, Marie is looking unhappy, trying to get some of the straw that ended up in it out of her hair. Dernier looks entirely too innocent and Steve can't help but wonder if he didn't put half of the straw there.

Marie is pouting, rattling something off in rapid-fire German, and all that Steve catches are the names of her brothers. Since her pout gets even more sincere, he gathers that her brothers like to tease.

"I think there might be a bit of a sibling issue here," Steve says to Bucky. 

Bucky laughs, hands the basket full of strawberries to Johanna and crouches next to Marie. He gestures toward her hair. "I could fix it if you want," he says, then looks up at Dernier, prompting him to translate.

Marie worries her lower lip between her teeth, looking doubtful, so Steve gives her his best winning smile, the one that worked on all the shy little kids on the USO tours. "Bucky has three sisters. Back home, when they were little, he always fixed their hair."

Dernier provides what sounds like a rocky translation and Marie begins to smile.

"Wirklich?" she asks. 

Bucky, though Steve knows he doesn't speak any more German than Steve does, replies from context. "Yeah, I really did. But it's our secret now. No one but me and Steve knows about it."

Dernier coughs and excuses himself with a bitten-back grin. Steve is sure, though, that this particular secret will not make it outside their little circle.

Marie plops down in front of Bucky, tailor-fashion, and looks at him over her shoulder with wide, expectant eyes. Bucky pulls out his comb, opens the ribbons in her hair and combs the straw out of her hair. It's darker than her sister's and wavier. Once he has all the straw removed, Bucky gets to work and gathers Marie's hair into two neat braids with quick and efficient but gentle moves. Johanna watches him with keen attention.

"All set," Bucky says when he's finished and rests the braids on her shoulder.

Marie claps her hands in excitement. "Danke, Onkel Bucky!" she crows, then she dashes off toward the farm.

Johanna doesn't follow her sister, instead, she swings the strawberry basket in one hand and runs the other hand over her hair as if trying to smooth it. She keeps looking at Bucky.

Bucky catches the nervous gesture. "You too?" he asks and gestures between her hair, the comb and Marie. "I mean, I gotta stay in practice, seeing as how these guys just don't have enough hair to braid."

Steve smirks and Bucky very pointedly doesn't look at him, because Steve knows that Bucky wouldn't be able to control his laughter if he started now.

Johanna, who hasn't noticed their unspoken back and forth, nods, high color in her cheeks that has nothing to do with sun.

Bucky's smile, already lurking in the corners of his mouth. grows wide when she sits down in the grass the way her sister did. He takes the pins out of her hair and runs the comb through her straight hair. Steve wonders if Johanna has her father's hair, since her sister's is so different. She squeezes her eyes closed and worries her lower lip while Bucky works. Her hand is curled around the basket's handle. 

Bucky's smile lingers, giving his face a gentleness that Steve hasn't seen since Brooklyn. He weaves Johanna's hair in an intricate pattern that reminds Steve of a grain spike and then proceeds to pick some of the red and white clover blossoms growing on the side of the field. He works the flowers into the braid and Steve, guessing what it'll mean for Johanna, the middle child that Steve guesses gets overlooked more often than not, feels a familiar rush of fondness for Bucky warm his heart. 

"All done," Bucky says when he has used the last blossom to decorate the braid.

"Beautiful," Steve says when Johanna looks up at him, gauging his reaction. "Princess," he enunciates slowly, hoping she'll understand.

Johanna's hand flies to her head, feeling what Bucky has done. A look of awe crosses her face and her blush deepens as she rises.

Bucky rises as well and Johanna reaches out a hand saying "Dankeschön." She actually gives a slightly awkward curtsey in front of him and Bucky, ever the gentleman, gives her a little bow and says, "Milady."

Johanna blushes even more and runs off toward the house as well. She forgets about the strawberries in the basket, so Steve picks it up. The sun is warm on his shoulders when they walk back toward the farm.

"That good old Barnes charm is still working, I see," he says after a few steps.

He can _hear_ Bucky roll his eyes. "She's eleven, Steve."

"Still susceptible," Steve points out. "Who can blame her, with those hair-braiding skills of yours…"

Bucky slaps his hand to Steve's chest and stops him. "If you breathe a word of this to the others, I will shave off your hair and your eyebrows in your sleep," he growls. He looks fierce enough Steve believes him.

Steve laughs and claps his free hand to Bucky's shoulder. "Don't worry. Your secret is safe with me."

"Speaking of shaving… " Bucky rubs his chin and Steve hears his stubble rasp against his palm the way his own did earlier.

"Yeah, we better," Steve agrees. "Come on, before Dum-Dum gets to the table first."

The girls are helping Lise put chairs around a long table in the courtyard, a white table-linen fluttering like a sail in the breeze as Lise shakes it out.

To the side of the courtyard is a pump and Monty, Gabe and Dum-Dum are already washing up, getting presentable. Dum-Dum has a little pocket mirror in his hand and a comb in the other and combs his moustache while Monty has the shaving soap and the straight razor out and is conducting his usual meticulous shave. Steve and Bucky join them.

Even Bucky, who hasn't been paying all that much attention to personal grooming in the field, shaves his face carefully smooth and when Monty comments on it, he shrugs and replies, "Can't look like a caveman in front of these lovely ladies."

Bucky grins at Steve when it's Steve's turn to lather up the shaving soap.

"What?" Steve asks.

"Nothing." Bucky shakes his head and lets the smile grow wider, then continues, "I guess I'm still not used to you having to shave."

Steve flicks soap suds at him and reaches for the razor. If he's being honest, it's the one thing the serum changed that he could have gone without.

When they're all presentable, with their clothes straightened, hair combed, and their faces shaved, they go back to the courtyard, where plates and spoons now line the white tablecloth. Light and shadow from the giant linden tree play over silver spoons and make them glint. When Lise appears in the courtyard, carrying a large and heavy-looking pot, Steve jogs up to take it from her and she smiles at him, surprised but grateful. Steve has a feeling that she's not used to voluntary helping hands.

Lunch is a hearty, creamy, bacon-heavy potato soup with what turns out to be strips of pancake. It's simple but delicious and Steve has to stop himself from wolfing it down and asking for more before anyone else on the table is finished with their first helping.

The Dittmann boys, Martin and Arthur, who sit flanking the girls, are busy teasing their sisters, particularly Johanna, about the fancy braids they now have. Arthur, a gangly, freckled, and tousled-looking fourteen-year-old keeps pulling Johanna's braid and she looks near tears when one of the clover blossoms falls to the ground.

"Arthur Dittmann!" Lise thunders and Arthur snaps his attention back to his plate.

From the corner of his eyes, Steve sees Bucky give Johanna a sign, indicating that he'll fix it again later. Dum-Dum, who has put two and two together, slaps Bucky on the back and suggests a career in hairdressing to him once the war is over. 

"Don't look at me," Bucky says, unfazed. "That's all Steve's doing. He's the artist around here, remember?"

Steve nearly chokes on a spoonful of soup.

Johanna blushes, though, and keeps sneaking shy looks at Bucky from underneath her long lashes. Steve sees Lise catching one of those looks. She frowns initially, but when she sees that Bucky is completely oblivious to Johanna's evident crush on him, she relaxes and smiles.

Bucky is the first one to get a second helping – extra pancake strips, too – and the first one to get dessert as well. 

Dessert is simple – just strawberries in fresh sweetened milk, but sweet heavens, is it ever good. Steve sees Bucky's eyelids flutter shut in delight at the first try and the others, though they make fun of Bucky making out with food, look equally blissful.

With a full stomach and a smile on his face that refuses to fade, it occurs to Steve that he's happy.

***

Lise disappears into the kitchen again after lunch, taking Johanna with her to help her wash the dishes. She refuses help from the Commandos and calls in her sons instead.

The only one who gets out of the chores is little Marie, and she finds Dernier and soon neither of them can be seen, only her excited, breathless chattering floats over the courtyard to where Steve and Bucky are sitting in the grass outside the barn. 

"What mischief her brothers haven't taught her yet, Dernier will." Bucky shakes his head, grinning. "I wonder if we should warn her mother."

Steve chuckles. "I have a feeling she's used to it." 

Bucky lies back on his side in the soft grass, and runs his hand over it so it's in and out of full sunlight. "God knows my Ma is. Felt like nothing could shock her, no matter what we did."

Steve feels the reply freeze in his throat. Bucky hasn't talked about his family since Christmas, though he knows Bucky's Ma and Becca write letters to him. Steve knows because they write to him, too, and they ask about Bucky and why he barely replies to them.

When he finally thinks he's capable of talking around the lump in his throat, he sees that Bucky has his eyes closed and is breathing slow and even. Steve releases the breath he's been holding and feels his face soften as he watches Bucky sleep. He deserves that, he thinks. They all do, but Bucky most of all.

He lies down himself and watches large, fluffy white clouds sail across a piercing blue sky. The sweet scent of the blossoming Linden tree mingles with the scent of the elderberry tree blossoming in front of the barn. Birds sing and frogs croak from the little brook flowing nearby, but apart from that, it's quiet enough Steve could hear Bucky's heartbeat if he tried.

He wants to memorize this, and sits up to study the way Bucky's face looks smooth and relaxed and innocent. He'll keep this for days to come that won't be as happy as this one.

Steve is about to reach into the breast pocket of his uniform jacket to bring out his small sketchbook when Lise Dittmann rounds the corner with a large baking tray in hand. A big, wood-fired oven housed in a building adjacent to the barn – looking large enough to hold several breads at once – was fired earlier that day. It looks like she's going to use the residual heat for baking a cake. She stops when she sees Bucky fast asleep and a smile tugs at the corners of her mouth.

Marie comes bolting out into the meadow, calling, "Mama, Mama," and something else Steve has no hope of understanding.

Steve's knee is close enough to Bucky's hand that he feels him twitch in his sleep. Lise sees it as well and gives Steve an apologetic look. When Bucky doesn't wake, she shushes Marie, giving Bucky a look that Steve is only too familiar with. It's the look his own mother, and later, Bucky's mother, reserved for him when he wasn't well – that concerned, protective sadness that seems unique to mothers all over the world. It warms Steve.

Marie looks at Bucky as well. Steve can see the wheels turning behind her tiny forehead. Finally, her face brightens and she bends down, picks a clover blossom from the meadow, tiptoes up to Bucky and sticks the flower in his hair with delicate fingers. She straightens when she's done, surveys her work and nods, pleased with herself. Behind her, Dernier rubs his hand over his mouth and hides a grin while Lise shakes her head, smiling, before she walks on toward the oven.

Marie looks at her mother, then gives Steve an earnest look, points at Bucky and puts her finger over her lips in a universal gesture of 'shush'.

Steve copies it with a grave face and nods. Marie runs back to where Dernier is leaning against the side of the barn.

It's quiet again for a while, the only sounds are Lise scraping the ash from the oven and Bucky's deep, even breaths.

He turns back to Bucky and looks with unabashed attention. His head is turned to the side, the shadows accentuate the gentle cleft in his chin that's only really visible when he shaves, his lips are slightly open, and a dusting of fine freckles spans his nose and forehead. Sleep has smoothed the hard lines from his features and he looks young, so much like the Bucky from before the war. Giving in to his earlier impulse, Steve gets his notebook out, reaches for the pencil and starts drawing Bucky with quick lines. It's something he hasn't done in a while, and he feels rusty at first, but the drawing quickly comes to life, right down to the way Bucky's long lashes throw shadows on his cheeks and the white clover blossom contrasting with his dark hair.

Steve is so intent on his work that he doesn't notice anything else until Dernier's shadow falls over Bucky. Bucky's eyes move under his lids. Steve looks up and sees Dernier with his finger over his lips. A quiet squeaking sound draws his attention to Dernier's side and Steve lets the notebook sink, stretching his back to check out the noise.

Little Marie has her upper skirt hitched up and is carrying something alive and furry in it. At first, Steve thinks it might be baby rabbits, but when Marie walks up to Bucky, he sees that it's three kittens. She gets ready to dump the kittens in Bucky's lap and Steve's stomach does an unpleasant flip-flop. They're all soldiers, and their triggers are hair-thin, so waking Bucky with an unexpected surprise, no matter how well-meaning, might have consequences little Marie isn't prepared for. Steve reaches out to pull her back, but he feels Bucky's fingertips press against his knee, indicating he's awake and aware and just playing along for Marie's sake.

Steve pulls his hand back then, nods at Marie and, with the widest grin up at Dernier – whom Steve had seen nod from the corner of his eyes as well – she upends the skirt. The kittens, one black with white paws, and two brown-and-white tabbies, land on Bucky with outraged meows.

Marie laughs in loud delight when Bucky pretends to wake up with a shriek. The kittens dart away from the sound at first, their huge, innocent eyes appearing scared, but then Bucky rolls to the side again and makes soothing noises and soon he has all three kittens climbing over his legs and arms. The black-and-white one is braver than its siblings and climbs its way up Bucky's chest and to his shoulder where it stops, considers, and when Bucky holds absolutely still, it carefully inches closer to his face and taps a tiny paw against his nose. Bucky sneezes and the kitten darts back, looking horrified, the tiny tail swishing in the long grass. It doesn't stay away for long, though, and comes back to Bucky.

"You're a bit like Steve, aren't you?" Bucky murmurs to it and laughs.

After a while, the kittens are used enough to the humans around them that they let themselves be petted. Marie chatters, excited, and keeps holding the black-and-white kitten to Bucky's face to make him sneeze at it. Bucky plays along. His smiles are easy and hold none of that brittle edge that Steve's grown so used to seeing over the past few months. With the black-and-white kitten crawling all over him, digging tiny claws into his skin, and chasing after straps on his uniform jacket, he laughs. He looks relaxed and almost… Steve stops petting the tabby kitten curled in the crook of his knee and takes a deep breath as something uncoils in his chest. He wasn't sure he'd see this again – Bucky looks happy.

When their laughter fades away, Steve hears strings of music coming from the courtyard. "Think Jim fixed the radio?" he asks Bucky.

"Sounds like it," Bucky says.

Marie runs off toward the music, so Steve, Bucky and Dernier each pick up a kitten and bring them back to the hay barn where the mother cat is meowing unhappily and hisses at them. The black-and-white one follows Bucky for a few steps, then the mother cat pounces, gets her teeth into the top of the kitten's neck and carries it back inside with a very grumpy attitude.

"If the kitten is like me, then Mama cat is like you," Steve comments. Bucky blows him a raspberry. Dernier laughs.

In the courtyard, the music sounds louder. Jim has indeed fixed the family's radio. It's tuned in to a crackly short wave station playing Strauss operetta tunes.

On the bench under the Linden tree, the rest of the guys are talking to Bernhardt, Arthur, and Martin through Gabe's rapid-fire translations. Steve hears the Dittmann boys ask what it's like to be a soldier, and Dum-Dum, Monty, and Jim, as well as Gabe, relay funny stories from boot-camp and from time-off between missions, never from actual fighting. They've seen too much of the war to glorify it. Bernhardt looks appreciative when they steer the boys away from the subject.

Johanna seems to have finished her kitchen chores and is standing with her back leaning against the farm house's wall, chewing the end of her braid and tapping one foot in the rhythm of the music. She seems interested in the conversation between the other Commandos and her brothers, but not confident enough to join in. 

A new piece of music starts, something Steve's familiar with but can't identify and Johanna lights up. She sheds some of her shyness, pushes back from the wall and starts to sway with the music, doing little pirouettes.

Next to Steve, Bucky laughs under his breath, delighted, and then strides toward Johanna. The typical swagger he had when he met girls for a dance is back. Bucky holds out his hand to Johanna and asks in fragmented German that sounds a lot like German words with English pronunciation to Steve: "Kann ich haben dieses dance, miss?"

Johanna gapes at him and his outstretched hand and tries to understand what he just said, proving that Bucky's German really isn't very good. She puts two and two together though, and blushes to the roots of her hair before she nods. A blink of an eye later, Bucky has her small feet on his boots and he's teaching her to dance with the kind of patience only a big brother can have.

Dum-Dum, Gabe, Monty, and Jim watch him and mutter something about always knowing Bucky was a ladies' man, but it lacks heat. They're just as charmed as Steve and Johanna are.

Arthur and Martin roll their eyes in typical teenaged-boy embarrassment and comment on the dance lesson in German. From the way Bernhardt reaches out his hand to lightly slap the both of them over the backs of their heads it wasn't a favorable comment.

In the meantime, Marie has appeared in the courtyard as well and sees Bucky teaching Johanna. She watches for a minute, then she marches up to Dernier, tugs on his trousers and holds up her arms expectantly. Dernier laughs, picks her up and starts swinging her around the courtyard until she laughs, loud and delighted.

When the next musical piece starts, Lise walks across the courtyard carrying the baking tray that now contains a perfectly browned cake. The scent of caramelized sugar, butter, and freshly baked yeast dough follows in her wake and Steve's mouth begins to water. She sets the cake down to cool on the table and watches Bucky with Johanna, and Dernier with Marie, and smiles.

Gabe walks over to her, gives a perfect bow, and asks her for the next dance. Before she has the chance to reply, he has gallantly whirled her into a dance. "I always wanted to marry a woman who could cook and bake like you," Gabe says after they have covered the courtyard twice, first in English, which he translates quickly. Now Lise's laughter fills the courtyard as well.

Dum-Dum shakes his head and walks up to where Lise and Gabe are dancing. He taps Gabe's shoulder to stop him and then takes Lise's hand. "How about throwing out this lout here, Ma'am, and running away with me?" He points toward the cake where Arthur and Martin have suddenly appeared even though Steve didn't even see them move. "I swore I'd never marry, but for a woman who can cook and bake and dance like you do, I'd be willing to make an exception." He twirls her into a dance as well, away from Gabe, who translates something Steve is sure does not match what Dum-Dum said. Lise only laughs louder.

Bernhardt leans back against the tree and looks at the scene in front of him in amusement. He reaches for the pipe sitting next to him and lights it, puffing great clouds; approval and a bit of wistfulness that he can no longer join in written over his features.

Bucky teaches Johanna real waltz steps, talking her through the step-counting, and praising her when she gets it right. She's no longer on his feet but moving on her own.

In the meantime, Monty has cut in on Marie and Dernier's dance and is jumping in an uncharacteristically untamed circle with Marie to the cheerful tune of the quick waltz. Steve decides that it'll be time to cut in soon and take Marie from Monty. Before he makes her throw up with all that bouncing on a full stomach.

Jim is quicker, though. With a perfect poker-face, he taps Monty's shoulder and indicates the bench with the thumb. Monty lets go of Marie, shrugs, and walks up to Steve instead. "Rogers, Dernier, shall we dance?"

Steve almost falls over laughing at the look of slack-jawed surprise on Dum-Dum's face when he actually lets Jim and Monty pull him to the courtyard and starts to do a horrible impression of a dance. He's always had two left feet and he doesn't try to hide it now.

"Rogers!" Bucky thunders across the courtyard. "Haven't I taught you anything?" He points at Johanna. "See, this is how you do it!"

Steve shrugs, unapologetic. "Don't have my dancing shoes on," he calls back, indicating his bare feet.

Bucky shakes his head and laughs.

The dance screeches to an abrupt halt when Lise spots Arthur and Martin trying to lift the cake from the baking tray.

"Wagt es ja nicht, ihr Lausebengel!" she calls out in a voice that would have made Colonel Phillips proud.

And just like that, the dancing ends and segues into afternoon coffee time. It's not real coffee, it's the substitute made from roasted barley, but it tastes wonderful alongside the still-warm yeast cake.

For the rest of the afternoon, they help Bernhardt rake the now-dried hay and pile it on one of the haystacks.

After dinner, Marie brings out the kittens again for the other Commandos to see and they play with them until the sun begins to set and Lise calls for Marie and Johanna to go to bed. 

Dernier ruffles Marie's hair and hugs her and Bucky kisses Johanna's hand, thanking her for the dance again. Johanna blushes. Marie butts in on her sister's moment and shoves the black–and-white kitten at Bucky, points toward the barn, and says, "Mama."

Bucky agrees that he'll take the kitten back and sets out to do just that.

Both girls disappear in the house, waving. 

When Bucky hasn't come back after about half an hour, Steve gets up to check on him. It's an impulse he can't shake and he tells himself that he's just making up for all the times Bucky has watched out for him.

He finds Bucky sitting in front of the barn, leaning against it, fast asleep. The black-and-white kitten is curled in the palm of his left hand, his right hand covering it as if Bucky fell asleep in mid-pet.

It's a picture so serene and beautiful that it makes Steve regret he has no colors to capture it. The rich, red-golden sunset sparks auburn and bronze in Bucky's hair, his thick, long lashes lie over his cheekbones and his mouth is soft and slack with sleep. For several blinks of an eye, Steve can't breathe over how much this innocence touches something deep inside him and melts the icy knot that has been inside him since Italy.

He commits the picture to a room in his heart full of bright memories and then, unwilling to wake Bucky, he tiptoes back to the courtyard where appreciative, low laughter drifts between the walls of the farm. Steve frowns and walks closer to see what the Commandos are chuckling over. Halfway across the courtyard, he spots Arthur and Martin up in the big branches of the old Linden tree. They're peering down to see whatever it is the Commandos are bent over.

When he's close enough to see for himself, he rocks back on his heels, hand on his hips. Dum-Dum cocks an eyebrow at him as if to say, "Want to say something, Rogers?"

Steve raises an eyebrow at the picture of the dame with the very naked torso hiding behind a veil that leaves none of her considerable assets to the imagination. "You better not let the lady of the house see that," is all he says.

"It's his," Gabe grasses on Monty. 

Monty shrugs, looks up into the tree and says to Martin and Arthur, "If you want to be educated, you better get down."

The boys all but fall out of the tree like ripe fruit and then they're all bent over the skin mag.

Steve shakes his head with a grin but keeps watch so he can warn them should Lise Dittmann appear.

Jim gets up from the bench and comes to stand next to him. "Is he sleeping?" he asks, proving once again that he is a lot more perceptive than he pretends to be. The Commandos, all of those men who were in the Hydra prison camp together, they all watch out for Bucky, because Bucky has been through some unspoken hell, and because Bucky is one of them in a way that Steve, who rescued them but wasn't in there with them, will never be. Jim, just like all the others, knows that Bucky doesn't sleep enough.

"Yeah," Steve says.

"Good," Jim says. "He needs it."

From an open window somewhere inside the house, a lullaby drifts outside – Lise, singing her girls to sleep.

***

Despite Lise and Bernhardt offering them their hay barn, they sleep outside under a thousand stars, with a nearly full moon hanging large and low in the night-sky. Bucky wakes just in time for the others to call it a night, at least for the few hours they have until the plane comes to pick them up. He plonks down next to Steve and is out like a light again mere seconds after.

***

The plane's propellers kick up some of the hay chaff they cut during the day. It swirls through the air and its scent mingles with dust and engine exhaust.

They're boarding, Dum-Dum and Monty already inside when a small cry of dismay, audible over the idling propeller, makes Steve turn around. Little Marie stands at the edge of the field, her nightgown fluttering around her. Johanna is with her, holding her hand. She looks torn between giving Marie support and doing the responsible thing and taking her back to the house.

Dernier hears her too and jogs over to the girls without hesitation. Bucky turns around to look where Dernier's going and his shoulders sag. His face softens when he sees Johanna shivering in the wind. He holds up two fingers to Steve and mouths "Two minutes."

Steve sighs. and for an irrational moment, he considers simply taking off and leaving Bucky here where he's safe and happy for the first time in too long. Away from the war. He almost resents Phillips for not making Bucky go home. At least then Steve wouldn't have to be the heartless bastard who gives Bucky the hurry up sign now. At the same time, he knows that Bucky wouldn't want that and would only feel betrayed. So while Steve's heart aches, watching the scene, he also knows that they don't have the time for long goodbyes. They only have a small window for an undetected take off and return to where they'll need to refuel before heading to England. 

He doesn't hear what they're saying, only sees Marie push something at Dernier before Bucky reaches them. Dernier shakes his head and tries to push whatever gift it is back at Marie, but she shakes her head wildly and clamps her arms around his legs, hiding her face against his midriff. The fight visibly goes out of Dernier. He dislodges Marie carefully, then crouches in front of her to give her a proper hug, resting his cheek against her hair and running his hands over her small back while she shakes in his arms.

Bucky talks to Johanna, though Steve can't make out what he's saying either. He runs his hand through her windswept hair and she gives a watery smile that soon falters. Her lower lip wobbles and her forehead furrows. Bucky shakes his head. He cups her face and wipes his thumbs across her cheeks, brushing away tears, then bends down and presses a kiss to her forehead. Bucky lets go of her with a final stroke of his palm over her head, then nudges Dernier. Together, they say a final goodbye to the girls and then jog toward the plane. When they climb in, both of their eyes are suspiciously glassy.

Bucky and Dernier busy themselves buckling into their seats, a meager safety measure when they may end up shot at, but Steve has a feeling they're glad the task at hand demands their attention.

Steve looks outside a final time before he closes the hatch. Johanna stands tall, her shoulders squared. She has Marie on her hip even though she's swaying under her sister's weight. The wind tears at both of their nightgowns, making them flutter around them. They're like ghosts with the swirling, moonlight-silvered chaff and the dark shapes of the farm behind them. Steve raises his hand to wave to them and Johanna waves back, then clutches her sister tight to her. He watches them from the plane's window until the plane lifts off and they are lost in the darkness.

"That's what you get for flirting with the local ladies, Jimmy boy," Dum-Dum says to Bucky as Steve sits down. It lacks heat. 

Bucky just looks down at the deck, lost in thought.

Gabe claps a hand on Dernier's shoulder. Dernier flinches and pulls a face.

"Leave them alone, guys," Jim says. The sentence hangs in the noise of the plane for a few incredulous seconds. It's Jim, though, and he's never stopped anyone from teasing before, so they do.

***

Steve wakes from a short nap when he hears a very colorful French swearword and a yowling noise. He blinks his eyes open and sees Dernier unbuttoning his jacket. Gabe switches on his flashlight and shines it at Dernier, who squints and curses. Something tumbles out of his jacket, a black-and-white ball of fur and angry hissing and meowing. Dernier's shirt is shredded, his chest is scratched bloody. He mutters obscenities under his breath as he dabs at the scratches with a dirty handkerchief from his pocket.

Jim groans. Next to him, Dum-Dum begins to shake with laughter. "Found yourself a pussy, Frenchie?"

Dernier pretends he doesn't understand and Gabe translates the good-natured insult. Dernier gives Dum-Dum the middle finger, which only makes Dum-Dum laugh harder. Monty keeps snoring in the corner, not even this ruckus waking him when he knows he's safe.

Steve gapes; he's not amused. "You didn't," he says, glaring at Dernier. "Tell me you didn't."

Dernier gives him his best puppy-dog look while the kitten – it's the same one that climbed all over Bucky in the meadow earlier – darts between their feet, its fur standing on end, its eyes large and terrified. 

"Stop giving me that look," Steve says. His heart aches for the poor beast, it looks too much like the kitten Fenton Grayling had been trying to drown in a rain water barrel back in the spring of '41. He knows Dernier didn't mean any harm, he knows he's overreacting, but he can't seem to stop himself. "The poor thing isn't even four months old and now it's away from its mother. We're not on base enough to care for it. Besides, all the noise on the plane and the pressure shifts, it's going to be traumatized for life, it – "

"I've got it," Bucky says all of a sudden, stopping Steve mid-rant. He'd thought Bucky had kept on sleeping as well. 

Bucky reaches for the kitten, pulls it against his chest and strokes its puffed up fur, murmuring to it. 

Steve forgets about his rant. He remembers Italy, how dejected and broken Bucky looked, and his heart does a funny somersault while Bucky placates the kitten. The meager glow from the flashlight catches in the hint of stubble on Bucky's cheeks and on his long lashes, gilding him and accentuating his slight smile and the near-dimples in his cheeks. He looks so much softer around the edges now. Steve's hope that all Bucky needs is for the war to be over to mend again is rekindled.

When the kitten's fur has settled a bit, Bucky opens his pack with one hand and rummages in it. Gabe helps by shining the flashlight into it to see whatever it is Bucky's trying to do. He coos when Bucky gently sets the kitten into the pack. "Awww," Gabe says, "Mother Hen made a nest." Bucky keeps his hand over the opening of the pack. He strokes the kitten's tiny head with his trigger finger. Gabe keeps cooing. Bucky flips him off with his other hand.

From the corner of his eyes, Steve sees Dernier smile and turns his head to glare at him again. "This isn't over yet," he warns.

Dernier unsuccessfully bites back on a smirk – but it's only a half-hearted attempt. When Steve looks back at Bucky, Bucky is raising an eyebrow at him as if to say 'And who do you think you're fooling?' Steve rolls his eyes, fights a smile, and pushes up to go and talk to the pilot.

Behind him, he hears Jim ask Bucky, "Sure you still need to pet it to calm it down? I'd think the smell of your old socks would have knocked it out as soon as you stuffed it in there."

Steve smiles when he hears the rest of the Commandos join in on the teasing. His shoulders relax.

***

They land in England just before dawn and it is still early morning when they reach London. Steve gets why they call it 'foggy London town'. They narrowly miss running down two bicyclists and a sheep as their driver barrels down the narrow streets. Who the hell has a sheep in London and how have they kept the neighbors from making mutton of it?

Phillips' aide-de-camp, a major with squinty eyes, a Georgia accent, a mole on his upper lip, and a limp ushers them through the basement vaults to the large conference table where Phillips is already waiting. The limp is from a mission in North Africa; Phillips doesn't keep him around because he can type. He's been around more and more as Peggy has been dispatched on missions in the field, but Steve isn't sure he's ever heard the man's name before he overheard their pilot talk to him on the radio. It's Andrade, as it turns out. His first name should be Guilherme, Steve thinks, or Rafaél or Maxwell. Something dramatic sounding to clash with his no-nonsense attitude.

"Took you long enough," Andrade says instead of a greeting. He doesn't bother introducing the three analysts already sitting.

Andrade sets up to take notes, indicating the mission debrief will remain highly classified. The SSR holds on to its intel tightly; it's in a constant battle with the OSS for resources and the ears of the brass. The mission to sabotage the Hydra factory included gathering information on their weapons R &D and where their other labs are hidden. They made it back unscathed, so Phillips knows they succeeded at one part of the mission, but what Command wants is more information. Without it, another Azzano, with Allied troops facing unbeatable Hydra weapons, will happen again.

Not one of the Howling Commandos is all right with that. That's why they volunteer for the worst missions.

"What about the other labs? Did you find out where the rats are hiding?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well?"

"Sergeant Barnes managed to grab a map and copy a memo detailing why the factory's materials were diverted to several Hydra bases. Morita has a couple rolls of film that will need to be developed." 

Phillips looks impatiently at Bucky. Bucky pulls his pack onto the conference table to get out the map he stuffed into it. They hadn't dared steal any more paperwork; fearing that it might give away they'd been there. So Jim, using one of Stark's small cameras, had taken pictures of all the papers that looked important or useful. The pictures would have more intelligence than the map, but it isn't as exciting handing off a roll of film as a stolen map.

Steve only remembers the kitten when Bucky opens his pack and everyone can hear it hiss. The kitten darts from the backpack before Bucky can catch it and lands right in the middle of the table. Its fur puffs out on end, tail like a bottle brush, doubling its meager size.

Steve freezes, horrified. From the corner of his eyes, he sees that the rest of the Commandos share his reaction. He slowly looks at Phillips, who just blinks at the kitten. The kitten looks back at him, meows once and then advances toward him. Andrade muffles a snort of laughter, badly.

Dernier starts to slink down in his chair when the kitten climbs up Phillips uniform as if he's just another kind of tree.

Steve rubs a hand over his face, shielding his wince and waits for the inevitable outburst from Phillips.

Surprisingly, it never comes.

Phillips picks the kitten up, sits down and pets it with one finger, scritching right between its eyes. The kitten begins to purr like a buzzsaw. "I take it this is Hydra's latest weapon?"

"Terribly dangerous, sir," Monty says with a straight face.

The analysts all gape like they believe it, while Andrade gives in and guffaws. There are few people who would dare that in front of a higher-ranking officer. Steve _likes_ him.

"What about that map, Barnes?" Phillips prompts, acting as if there's not a kitten sitting in his lap. "Did you eat it?"

Phillips never mentions the kitten. Not once. Bucky pulls out the map and translates his hurried chicken scratch for the analysts and Andrade, then they report everything they observed during the mission.

The kitten, quickly dubbed Cat, adopts Colonel Phillips. Him and Bucky. Andrade feeds it illicit fish and scraps of Spam until he disappears on a mission in Turkey. Phillips' new aide moans about cat hair. Cat pisses on his hat. Even if Bucky's the only one allowed to pet it, the Commandos consider Cat their mascot and Steve wishes he could let Johanna and Marie know.


	6. July 1944, France

**July 1944, France**

He should have seen it coming. The Resistance girl, Renée of the mischief-filled brown eyes, is smart and tough, as well as very pretty, and though she's at least a head shorter than Bucky, she kicked his ass when he surprised her. She knows what she wants and what she doesn't want. She has a steel spine, just like Peggy, but she has none of Peggy's reserve. Renée is loud, curvy, and cheerful. She handles the explosives she keeps for blowing up German trains so casually even Dernier blanches. She has such a filthy vocabulary in her endearing French accent that it sees Dum-Dum speechless.

She and Bucky get on like a house on fire. Steve hasn't seen Bucky flirt so enthusiastically since Brooklyn and Renée plays along, gives as good as she gets, and makes Bucky's smile lose its edge.

Steve hates her.

Once the targeted supply train is destroyed, they celebrate. Everyone proceeds to get outrageously drunk, thanks to the local tavern's wine cellar. The village is half-ruined, with most of its buildings reduced to rubble, but a few people still live there. Renée finds them half of a dozen loaves of fresh bread and that's enough along with the booze to make it a party. Steve tries to ignore Bucky and Renée practically sitting in each other's laps, feeding each other chunks of bread, swigging Calvados straight from the bottle and giggling. He drinks along with the boys, but feels nothing except a slight buzz.

Renée wears a brown polka dot dress; the silky fabric glistens in the low light from the oil lamps. It molds to her body and swings round her legs and only enhances her curves. The beret that hid her shoulder-length brown hair is gone and she's curled and pinned some of it up. 

Renée's tough-as-nails persona should clash with her easy femininity, but they don't. Her hair swings against her bare neckline and Bucky leans in to breathe her in while he looks at Steve. Steve can smell her lily of the valley perfume from where he sits. He wants to hate her even more, because she is exactly the kind of woman Bucky could fall for. 

It's not fair. Renée is a good person; Steve knows that. She'll be gone in a few days though, on another Resistance mission, and Bucky will be left alone again. He doesn't want any more pain in Bucky's life.

Bucky laughs too loud when Renée tugs him outside with her. They disappear into the darkness. Dum-Dum wolf-whistles. 

Steve doesn't. He knows where this will end. He's seen it back in Brooklyn. Hell, with Caroline, he's _been_ there. He remembers the wolf whistles of the other USO girls and Caroline giving them the middle finger while blowing them a kiss.

The thought is ridiculous, but Steve wonders how Bucky will… He knows Bucky doesn't have any rubbers left because he used up all of his to keep his rifle dry. Over the last week, rain soaked them all to the skin every day, so Bucky was bumming them from the other men. They all teased him over that. Hell, it was Dum-Dum who gave him his last one with a mournful sigh. They haven't been back to base to re-stock since.

"Let him have some fun," Dum-Dum says and bumps his shoulder heavily against Steve's. He smells of cheap cigarettes, garlic and red wine. "Man's gotta let off some steam. Been wound too tight lately."

Doesn't he know that. And he wants that for Bucky, yet at the same time… Steve nods, unable to put into words what he thinks.

"Next girl's yours, pal," Jim says when he walks past them to relieve himself against the tavern's outside wall with a groan.

Jim misses the point entirely, but Steve doesn't correct him.

"Since you're the only one marginally sober and you barely sleep anyway, you get sentry duty," Monty declares. Well, he's the highest-ranking soldier among them if you don't count Steve's honorary title, so Steve gives him some leeway. "If Fritz decides to attack us, tell him to come back tomorrow when we're no longer sloshed."

The Commandos totter off to sleep, leaving Steve alone outside to watch over them. The expanse of the sky is endless, bedazzled with so many more stars than he ever saw from the city. His slow steps that make the sound of his boots echo down the silent cobblestone streets.

He inhales the scents of the night, eyes closed: the warm air, blossoming lavender stronger now than during the day, the cigarette smoke still clinging to his uniform. When he opens his eyes again to continue walking the perimeter, the moon, gold as a coin, hovers over the eastern horizon.

Oil-lamp light flickers from behind the broken shutters of a bombed-out house. A scraggly-looking marmalade cat pads along a wall, the lambent flash of its eyes turned toward Steve before it slinks away.

Bats circle overhead, the ghostly flutter of their wings ruffling his hair, and he wonders if anyone else can hear their high squeaky noises. He couldn't have before the serum. He sits down on a dusty wooden bench in front of the house. He'd have liked some company, if only to distract himself from thinking about Bucky and Renée. He's not sure who is camping in the house with the oil lamp, but he thinks that, by sitting outside it, he can at least feel close to another human being. And if he thinks about Caroline, his first and only lover, and their time together between the USO shows, well, no one can blame him, right? It's as good a time as any.

Caroline, the smartest and kindest one of the USO girls. She's the one that used to star in his fantasies when he got himself off after he left for Europe and she stayed in LA. At least until he started working with his team. She'd faded away then. With his mind teasing him with images of Bucky and Renee, he tries to distract himself with one of his nights with Caroline. He's alone in front of the house, no one will notice or care if he gets hard, reliving a memory.

Her hands had been small but strong as she undressed him, squeezed his ass with a low, appreciative chuckle. He'd been easy back then, turned on by her boldness and so horny she only had to look at him from under her eyelashes and he was getting hard. It wasn't love, but damn, it was good. She'd been patient with him, taught him what felt good to her, to him. About that spot behind her ear that made her weak in the knees, about kissing until they were both breathless, about kissing a hot path down her body to the patch of curly brown hair between her legs, and to use his tongue on her until she made frantic, breathy noises and her scent changed…

A distinct, low-pitched female laugh tears Steve out of his memory. He feels his pants tight against his cock, closes his eyes and winces. Damn it.

The sounds of Bucky and Renée together travel all too well in the clear night. The house no longer has a roof or windows. Renée laughs and squeaks, then sighs, and Steve hears the wet, suckling noises of open-mouthed kisses.

Caroline had sounded like that too when he tickled her and then kissed her quiet while lazily thrusting against her, still half-clothed. Is Bucky doing the same thing in there, supporting himself over her with his arms the way Steve did to keep his weight off Caroline? Caroline said that she loved how she could watch his eyes and his lips while he rubbed up against her and, unbidden, his mind goes to imagining Bucky's eyes, half-lidded in pleasure, the blue ever-changing, and his lips, swollen from kissing and, _God_ , Steve hasn't been this hard in a long time.

He shouldn't be here. They shouldn't be here. This is his damn spot, his damn fantasy. There are days he curses his enhanced body, his every enhanced sense, because if he were still sickly and half-deaf, he wouldn't have to listen to Bucky in bed with Renée.

It's a punch to the gut when he hears Bucky moan, low and broken, and then Renée… That noise, that's the same sound Caroline made when he ran his tongue around her nipple, and Steve doesn't need his already overactive imagination to imagine what they're doing, or how they look: Bucky's slim, tan hands cupping her pale breasts, barely able to hold the fullness of them while Renée straddles Bucky and starts to sink down on him, Bucky's head thrown back, his eyes closed, the long line of his throat exposed, rough with stubble, his soft lips open, a moan lodged in his throat. 

The bedsprings squeak in an age-old rhythm. Dry-mouthed, Steve leans his back against the house. He knows he should leave and yet presses closer, the rough stone behind his back still damp and chilly even after a day of sun, listening to every sound they make. He's hard as hell, imagining it, Renée on top, the way Caroline liked it. He can picture Bucky's face, Bucky's hands on her thighs or cupping her ass, guiding and supporting her, _Christ._ His cock jumps, remembering how good it is like that, but maybe Bucky really doesn't have a rubber, maybe he's doing with Renée the stuff Caroline taught him, between the thighs or… 

Steve swallows and presses his hand against his cock through his uniform. Maybe Renée is doing what Caroline did that one time in Chicago. They didn't want to risk the gossip that would have started if he'd gone to a pharmacy for rubbers, but she wanted him in her, and, God, he'd wanted it too. Caroline wasn't willing to risk pregnancy, so she taught him to use the 'back door' as she'd called it. Tight, _tight_ heat, her body gripping him, sensations so intense he nearly blacked out. Caroline's eyes had been so dark with want, their bodies heated and slick with sweat, and she'd made those sounds, and all he could feel was the urge to lose himself in her, thrusting hard enough to pin her to the bed… It's no use, his cock is so hard it hurts, and he has no choice but to reach inside his uniform pants and wrap his hand around himself.

His breath stutters as the memory of Caroline overlaps with images of Bucky and Renée. Is Renée letting Bucky do what Caroline and Steve did? Is Bucky really in her, over her, skin to skin, closer than close, all his strength and intensity just for her...? God, Steve wants that. He starts to sweat, the slickness of it making the slow moves of his hand better. He _wants_ … As he spreads the moisture beading at the tip of his cock, he fights down a fresh wave of arousal. He… wants sex, he amends his thought. With a woman, like Caroline. It's just been too long. Listening to Bucky just reminds him of that. 

Renée gets louder and Bucky does too. If Steve ignores the rushing of blood in his ears, he can make out the slap of their bodies together, imagines Bucky's hips snapping up into her, Bucky buried deep in her tight, wet heat.

He can't deny himself any longer. He takes his dick out with a silently swallowed sob of relief and works himself harder, faster, in synch with the sound of the bed banging against the wall, with Bucky's panting.

One last urgent moan from Renée, Bucky mumbling something, maybe encouragements, maybe a name, and then Bucky must be coming too, because he goes absolutely silent. Then Bucky whines low under his breath, a sound Steve remembers from Brooklyn nights when Bucky, thinking Steve was asleep, touched himself.

It's that sound that pushes Steve over the edge; he comes with a gasp. Wet heat spills over his fist and he screws his eyes shut even tighter, face hot with arousal and shame. He can't move away for fear of someone discovering Bucky in a vulnerable moment of happiness. Steve has no right to be here, he knows, but he has to make sure Bucky gets what he needs.

It's quiet, only the sweet, mournful song of a nightingale and his own harsh breathing pierce the night, then Renée says something. It sounds gentle but resolute. Bucky doesn't reply, though Steve knows he speaks a little French. Steps, small feet in low heels walking over broken glass and debris, echo in the house and Steve's heart begins to race. He doesn't want Renée finding him here and realizing what he's been doing. He can imagine how angry Bucky would be too. He wipes his hand on the bench before frantically tucking himself back in. No one can know, no one can find him – literally – with his hands down his pants.

The footsteps disappear in the distance. Steve frowns. This isn't what he'd expected.

Inside, Bucky shakes out his clothes, then his steps sound loud, walking out as well.

Steve should walk away now, disappear, and never have Bucky find out that he was just outside, but it's too late.

Bucky rounds the corner of the house and looks up; he spots Steve sitting next to the house wall. In the bluish moonlight, Bucky's eyes widen; his face falls. He doesn't say anything, though. His boots scrunch over the cobblestones and he settles down on the bench next to Steve, slumps in on himself and leans his head against Steve's shoulder. It feels like he's given up on something, like some hope he had before has died. He smells of alcohol, lily-of-the-valley, sweat, wool, warm skin, and sex. Despair radiates from him like heat from a fire. Steve wants to curl his arm around Bucky so much it hurts. 

He doesn't; is too aware of the scent of his own climax. Bucky cannot know.

Steve's eyes burn. His throat is tight.

When he turns his head to look at Bucky, Bucky's hair brushes against his oversensitive skin. Bucky's eyes glitter in the moonlight.

Neither of them sleeps that night.


	7. August 1944, Germany

**August 1944, Germany**

The Kummersdorf weapons testing facility goes up in a spectacular chain reaction that only starts with Dernier’s bombs going off early. Steve's ears still ring minutes later. The jeep they came in is impossible to reach. Hydra soldiers swarm like a blown up wasp’s next between them and the jeep, so they're stuck with one banged-up looking German fire truck left in the motor pool, with its tattered tarp and dusty windows. Steve's honestly surprised when Dum-Dum, after cooing to the engine as if it were a lover, finally gets the truck running. The motor stutters and coughs, but runs. It’s the first turn of good luck they’ve had through the entire mission; everything else has gone awry.

They escape under the cover of the post-attack chaos. They know they won't make it far, though. The fire truck is low on fuel and easily spotted going away from, not toward the burning base, so when, about twenty miles in, Dum-Dum steers it off the main road and onto a narrow dirt path leading into a stretch of pine forest, no one asks why. They just pile out, brush off the tire tracks, and conceal the turn off with brush.

The forest ends and opens into a field overgrown with weeds. Through the dirty windshield, houses come into view in the distance, and Dum-Dum stops the truck in the cover of the trees. It diesels unevenly, rattling the frame, for a minute before stuttering into silence. Steve gets out without a word, ready to scout how many people are living on what's likely a farm.

He runs in a crouch while the sun creeps over the horizon, the day turning hot fast and merciless. He's sweating like a pig. August in Germany is hotter than a furnace. Humid, too, which makes it even worse. No one warned Steve of that; he wonders if anyone of the others was warned. Summers in New York were bad enough, with the buildings retaining the heat, and the nights refusing to cool off, but this feels worse. Now that they're out of immediate danger, the heat makes it hard to think, hard to move. The afternoon will be awful. Sweat runs down his face and back and under his arms and all Steve wants is to get rid of the cap and the uniform and just stop. He ran out of adrenaline hours ago and even his serum-enhanced body is wrung out and done. The last few weeks have been one mission after another without respite, each one more precarious than the last. The Commandos are exhausted, they haven't had a decent meal in days, and they're getting sloppy because of it.

He knows it's a dangerous line of thinking, because he doesn't really know what's awaiting him, but Steve's glad that this is only a farm. The risk of running into a trap is considerably smaller, given that this isn't an obvious place for them to hide. Maybe they can just sit through the afternoon, set watches, and sleep until dusk falls and it's safe to move out again.

Because if he's at the end of his tether, then the men must be ready to drop. He asks too much of them, the war asks too much of them, and they give it, over and over.

He arrives at the edge of the farm and studies it from the cover of an over-grown ditch and fence.

Sagging roofs half-covered by climbing vines and open barn doors hanging off-center from their hinges suggest that the farm is abandoned, but Steve scouts it fully after watching for an hour, unwilling to run into any more surprises. The farm really is empty and from the state of disrepair probably has been for years. Weeds have overtaken the garden, a patch shaded by dozens of apple trees. Tall grass stands in the fields and moves in the slight breeze coming up. Beyond the garden, Steve sees something glitter.

He walks back to the dirt road and gives the others the all clear sign. The truck rattles closer and Steve opens one of the barn doors to let Dum-Dum hide it out of sight. Gabe and Dernier back track and brush out the obvious tire tracks again with some bundled long grass.

Steve leans against the red brick wall in the shade when the others come trudging out of the barn one by one. Bucky looks wiped, Dernier is drenched in sweat and Gabe pulls his shirt off with a disgusted grunt. Jim's shirt hangs open, showing scratches and cuts near his throat and on his chest.

Soot and dust cover all of them. Combined with sweat it's become an unpleasant layer of sticky, dark slime on Steve's skin. Even Monty, usually always combed and perfectly British, looks disheveled, and that's a first that gives Steve a spiteful sense of satisfaction.

He peels out of the top of his uniform, then Bucky holds out a canteen with water. He takes one sniff in Steve's direction and pulls it back with a grimace.

"You're not a fragrant flower yourself," Steve says, snatching the canteen from Bucky, but it lacks heat. He must stink to high heavens. They lost most of their gear early on, when the op went south. They haven't seen soap and water in days. They need to clean up, badly. 

A gust of too warm wind brings the scent of apples with it, fresh and clean, and Steve's mouth begins to water. He forgets about the wish to clean up when his stomach rumbles, loud. He sees Bucky's nostrils flare as he picks up the scent as well. Bucky's face brightens under the dirt and the sweat and the dark shadow of a soft beard. "Apples? I'm not imagining that, am I?"

Steve shakes his head. "There's a garden." He points toward it with only one hand still stuck in the uniform jacket. When he finally gets it off, his shirt underneath is soaked. "Lots of apple trees."

"First tree's mine!" Gabe calls and dashes off toward the garden.

Bucky meets Steve's gaze with a grin as they set out to follow Gabe. His smile looks forced, probably because he's as exhausted as Steve.

***

A flock of birds flies up as Gabe runs into the garden. He drops to his knees in the shade of one of the trees and makes inarticulate noises of glee. The ground is littered with pale yellow apples the size of a child's fist. Light pink dusts them like a maiden's blush. Wasps swarm around the ones the birds have picked open. Gabe's disturbance makes them buzz angrily. Gabe has apples in both hands, alternating giant bites, beaming up at them.

Monty slices an apple with his pocket knife, drawing a snort from Dernier, who picks one low-hanging apple from the tree with his lips and teeth. Jim shakes his head, grins, picks one pointedly by hand and throws it at Bucky who catches it without even looking at Jim.

"Show-off," Dum-Dum grins.

Bucky smirks at him and bites into the apple. His eyes flutter shut briefly before he starts to chew, and Steve's mouth waters. Juice dribbles down his chin, leaving a glistening trail. It's the first fresh fruit they've had in two months and not, Steve thinks as he bites into his own apple, just the first food they've had in over a day. The crisp and sweet taste of the juicy apples is a godsend.

"Quit making out with the apple, Barnes," Gabe says.

Bucky's eyes open and crinkle at the sides. He moans indecently around the apple in his mouth and takes another bite. His lips stretch around the apple's pale flesh.

Steve swallows hard around his own bite.

"Indeed," Monty adds in a dry voice, rolling his eyes. "Do quit. You're making Steve blush on top of his sunburn." 

It's a never-ending source of amusement for the Commandos, Steve's fair skin and his tendency to blush.

Bucky shrugs and keeps chewing, show over. When he's finished, though, he tugs at Steve's arm, pulling him out of the sun and into the shade.

"Look at Sergeant Mother Hen fuss," Dum-Dum coos in syrupy voice. 

"Fuck off," is all Bucky says before he grabs another apple and leans against the tree he's sitting under.

A gentle wind moves the long grass. Cicadas chirp and swallows swarm around the farm building. 

Gabe looks at them, then at the buildings, thoughtful. "What do you think happened to the people who owned the farm?" he asks.

"Maybe it belonged to Jews and got taken from them?" Steve speculates. He's heard some of the stories Jewish refugees in England tell.

Monty shakes his head. "It wouldn't be abandoned then. If the stories are true, then the Germans would have given it to one of their own if it had been owned by Jews."

"Lost to the bank?" Dum-Dum offers.

"Possible, but unlikely," Monty says.

"Well, what's your brilliant theory then?" Dum-Dum asks, sounding a little miffed.

"Look at it," Monty says, indicating the farm. "The bad shape it's in, as if, even before it was abandoned, no one made any but the most urgent repairs."

"And your deduction, Sherlock?" Jim asks. It's become his favorite nickname for Monty, who has his nose in Conan Doyle novels whenever he has a free minute.

"I think the people who owned it were just old. Judging by the state of the farm, the husband just wasn't strong enough to do more than basic upkeep. Either they had no children or their son or sons went to the war and never came back." He shrugs. "And the old people just died and there was no one to take over the farm."

"Cheerful," Dernier says in heavily accented English.

"Got a better idea?" Monty asks.

Dernier says something in French and Gabe cracks up. "He says, maybe it's haunted."

"Ooooooooooooooooooh," Dum-Dum teases. "Is Frenchie afraid of ghosts?"

Dernier rolls his eyes and mutters something under his breath.

"What?" Dum-Dum asks.

"He says not as long as we have you with us. Your snoring would frighten any ghost in a two mile radius."

Dum-Dum throws an apple at Dernier but grins. Dernier ducks and grins back.

"Right now, I don't think we need your snoring," Jim says. "Our stench alone would make sure any ghost fled, begging for mercy."

Steve grimaces and looks at Bucky, who just raises an eyebrow. "I'd pay good money for a chance at a bath right now."

Bucky shrugs and sits up at little, looking out toward the forest.

"Your pretty French girl wouldn't have bedded you if you smelled like this, Sarge."

Steve can't help the unpleasant twisting in his stomach as he remembers Renée, that night in France, and the sound of Bucky and her together.

"Yeah," Bucky answers, distracted. His gaze is on something in the distance; he's not hearing them at all, Steve can tell. 

"Look at him, dreaming of her," Gabe teases and. Bucky may not hear Gabe, but Steve does, and his mind goes, unbidden but unstoppable, to the feel of Bucky's head on his shoulder, to hot skin and soft hair and the smell of sex. To his own skin itching with the need to reach out and touch, to soothe whatever it was that irrevocably broke in Bucky that night. To something basic in him reacting to the scent, too. He'd stopped his thoughts back then before he could examine it further, and he clamps down on them again now.

Instead, he looks at Bucky to check on his reaction and feels relieved, because he can see that Gabe is misreading him completely. Bucky's not daydreaming, this is Bucky shutting out all other senses to concentrate on just one. Steve doesn't hear any engine in the distance, so he doubts Bucky has seen or heard anything that would pose a threat. He can't tell what’s caught Bucky's attention, though.

Bucky gets up suddenly, shadows his eyes and says, "Hey, Steve, is that what I think it is?" 

Almost comically, everyone's heads peek over the tall grass in the direction Bucky is looking.

Less than a hundred yards from the orchard, something glitters through the thicket of pine trees. 

Steve stands, too, his shoulder brushing Bucky's as he shadows his eyes against the glare of the sun. "A lake?"

Bucky looks at him from the corner of his eyes. "That's what I was thinking." 

"We could check it out, see if the rest of the area is as abandoned as the farm," Steve says.

"Could?" Gabe is up first and starts to walk in the direction of the glittering, determined, and they all get up to follow him. 

In the shade of the forest, the resinous scent of the pine trees is heavy in the hot air. After just a couple of minutes, the strip of trees ends and indeed opens onto the view of a small lake, not quite a mile long, reflecting the perfect blue of the summer sky and masses of clouds on the horizon that are heralding a weather change. 

Gabe stops, scans the shoreline. "I'll check it out, you guys stay here." 

He disappears for a quarter of an hour. While they wait, one after the other they strip off their shirts. 

"I wonder if anyone ever thought of making a smell bomb," Jim muses. "Let a couple of soldiers sweat for a week and not bathe and we could just stink Fritz into submission."

Monty laughs. "If that would help, lots of wars would have ended a lot sooner."

Steve is just beginning to think that maybe he should have gone instead of Gabe, when Gabe reappears. He waits down at the shore and starts to wave, calling to Dernier who breaks out in the biggest grin Steve has ever seen on him. 

"Aléz!" he calls to them as he starts to run down to the lake.

The lake is lined with reeds, but here, where a couple of pine trees have crept close to the water, access to the water is unhindered. Their roots stick out where the water has washed away the soil, but between them, the sand is dry as dust. An old piece of thick rope with a knot at its end dangles from the overhanging branch of one tree, suggesting that kids once used this place to go swimming. 

Gabe crouches at the shore, testing the water temperature, when Steve reaches him. 

"Well?" Dum-Dum asks when he skids to a halt, kicking up dust.

"Too cold for an Irish ninny," Gabe says, grinning.

"Look what this ninny can do, though," Dum-Dum replies and gives Gabe a push. Gabe topples over and lands in the water with a splash.

"Oh, it's _on_ , Dugan," Gabe roars, splashing water at Dum-Dum who dances out of the way with greater agility than Steve would have credited to him. Dum-Dum moves up a little to get away from Gabe's splashing and sit down to take off his boots. The span of his solid shoulders is lined with freckles. His ever-present bowler sits at a ridiculous angle on his head.

A wet bundle of fabric comes flying through the air and hits Dum-Dum in the chest.

Dum-Dum picks up Gabe's pants with just his fingertips. Something white shows up along with the dark olive color of the wet cotton. "Are you starkers there, Jones?"

Gabe grins, all teeth. "Why, does that insult your Catholic sensibilities?"

Dum-Dum has his boots off by now and Dernier who's closest to him recoils with a sound of disgust. 

Bucky takes a step back as well and makes a retching sound. "The smell of his socks insults mine."

Dum-Dum laughs, unfazed. "You should smell trench foot sometime."

"This isn't that far off," Jim comments, shaking his head. 

Dum-Dum takes off his socks and reveals two weeping blisters on his big toes. 

"Let me have a look at that later," Jim says. "I have something that'll help."

"Sure, Dr. Quack," Dum-Dum says. "But I have something to take care of first." He pushes his uniform pants and underwear down, steps out of them and sets his hat more firmly on his head.

"My eyes!" Gabe shrieks from the water. "I'm being blinded by pasty Irish skin!"

Dum-Dum sets his hands on his hips, canting them forward. "Sure you're not being blinded by something else?"

"Your dick's not that impressive, Dugan," Jim says, dry as dust.

Steve stops stuffing his socks into his boots and grins as he watches Dum-Dum strut, naked as Mother Nature made him, but with the hat still firmly on his head, down to the water. Bucky shakes his head next to Steve, grinning too, as he divests himself of his boots. Steve's grin slips a little as he sees how visible Bucky's ribs are, how sharp the fragile swoop of his collar bones is. His shoulders are still wide, but the knobs of his spine are too close under his skin and the lean cut of his waist is bordering on malnourished. There isn't always enough food when they're on missions, but none of the other Commandos has lost so much weight. Steve silently vows to make sure Bucky eats more.

"You get one drop of water on the hat, you'll swallow half that lake, Jones," Dum-Dum warns.

"Maybe you should just take the damn thing off if you don't want it wet," Monty suggests. "You know, just a wild thought off the top of my head."

"And risk a sunburn?" Dum-Dum asks. "I don't have my own Mother Hen looking out for me."

"Definitely jealous," Jim declares.

"If Sarge were a Dame, maybe," Dum-Dum says as he wades into the water. "Oh, God, that's nice." He turns around. "You coming or are you too scared?"

Bucky looks away from Steve trying to push his own uniform pants down his sweat-damp legs and shares a sly look with Monty, Jim and Dernier. "Get his hat?" he asks under his breath.

"Not asking me?" Steve's a little disappointed.

"Someone has to referee," Monty states, stopping short whatever reply was on Bucky's lips.

They all strip, and soon, Steve is presented with four bare asses running down the slope and splashing into the water. Jim, Monty and Bucky dive in and resurface with a surprised shout; the water seems to be colder than they expected. Dernier catches some of the drops and shudders despite the heat. Thunder rumbles in the distance and he falls back, testing the water with his toes first, then looking at the sky and begins to mutter in French. Wading in the water, step by reluctant, complaining step, he looks like one of the storks Steve saw when they were last in Germany. He can't help but think of the Dittmanns. Their boys would have had all the fun out here.

"What's up, Frenchie?" Dum-Dum calls from where he's swum out in the lake. He’s sunk deep, all the way up to his mustache. "Afraid your dick will shrivel?"

Dernier replies something that Steve has learned by now is a very foul French expletive.

"Do you ever think about anything but dicks, Dugan?" Gabe shouts back.

"I'm a guy, aren't I?"

"Didn't take you for that kind of guy," Gabe replies and splashes water at Dum-Dum.

Something flickers over Bucky's face before he turns to his back, clamps two fingers to his nose and dunks his head under water.

Steve divests himself of his underwear and just stands by the shore, enjoying the way the sun and the breeze coming over the lake dries the sweat on his naked skin.

"No one said anything about refereeing naked, Steve," Monty calls from the water. 

"Yeah, unless you want more of Dugan's dick jokes, you need to get in as well," Jim agrees.

Bucky resurfaces from where he did a sleek diving maneuver. Water runs down his face, his hair is slicked to his head, and the way his nipples have turned into hard nubs suggests that the water really is colder than it looks. Still, the line of Bucky's arm sloping to his shoulder, muscles clearly defined, and the curve of his collarbone are both so elegant that Steve thinks that he'd much rather get out his sketchbook than jump in the water. All of the Commandos have their own beauty; the battles they face seldom allow anyone to see it, though. It's relaxed moments like these that make Steve want to draw them; when they're not being crushed under the constant pressure of the war.

"You're more a scaredy-cat than Frenchie," Bucky calls suddenly, shaking Steve from his contemplation. "Even he's made it in by now."

True. Dernier has managed to get over his reluctance and swum a couple of strong strokes from the shore. In fact, he's quietly, inconspicuously, swimming toward Dum-Dum. Steve wants to stay on shore even more, just to see if Dernier will manage what Monty and Jim haven't thus far.

"Come on, Rogers, you can't be that much of a chicken," Bucky calls. "Dive in! Or are you afraid to do anything without your shield?"

Steve crosses his arms over his chest. "You want me to dive?" he asks, cocking his eyebrow.

"I'm thinking you're too chicken."

"Are you sure that's what you want?"

"I'm beginning to think you're all talk, Rogers."

"Are you really sure?"

"Bawk-bawk!"

"Just remember that you asked for it," Steve says. He takes a run toward the shore, reaches for the rope in mid-run, and uses it to swing himself farther out and in Bucky's direction where he lands, ass first, with a gigantic splash. He resurfaces with a grin on his face.

"Graceful, Rogers," Bucky says, wiping water from his face. His voice drips sarcasm the way his hair drips water.

Steve just grins wider and shakes his head like a dog, splashing glittering drops of water in Bucky's direction. "I did warn you."

Bucky rolls his eyes, then dunks him, or tries to at least. As he pushes himself up and out of the water, his hands slip from Steve's wet shoulders and his momentum carries him forward, colliding with Steve chest first. 

The water is stirred up and silty and it tastes of minerals and weedy green stuff, before he splutters it out.

Bucky looks a little guilty and Steve isn't beyond using an opening when he sees one. He holds both hands together and describes a half-circle on the water's surface, sending a huge wave of water in Bucky's face.

"You little punk," Bucky says. Water slides down his temples, turns his hair dark as a seal's pelt, and beads on his spiky eyelashes. The look of annoyance and amusement is a familiar one, one Steve has often seen Bucky aim his way. "Is this how you wanna play?"

Dum-Dum is dog-paddling away from the rest of them, yelling, "Not my hat, damn you!" while Monty and Gabe circle like grinning sharks. Frenchie and Jim are the real threats, though, working to flank him while he's distracted. The splashing and hooting laughter puts paid to the idea any of them are serious, though.

"We should join them," Steve says.

Bucky's gaze flickers and his half smile falters in response. Steve wishes he hadn't said anything, because the moment between them shifts. Then Bucky shakes his head and grins, narrow-eyed and mock-threatening. "I think someone needs a lesson first."

"Well, when you find someone with something to teach me, let me know," Steve taunts.

"It's on, Rogers," Bucky replies. He drifts closer, still grinning, and then before Steve realizes what he means to do, he's kicked out, tangled his legs in Steve's and used his weight to drag Steve under. Steve gets another mouthful of water before he recovers and wrestles himself free.

They're both laughing as they slip and slide and wrestle with each other. It's easy with Bucky, has always been. Bucky always managed to be physical with Steve without hurting him, never just let him win. Now, thanks to the serum, Steve can retaliate without fear of hurting himself – though if he's honest, he was never afraid of hurting himself, only of how guilty Bucky would feel. The water buoys them both up and even though everyone's sloshing around, it's deep enough that it's not yet murky further out. Steve feels cleaner and fresher than he has in weeks.

Playing with Bucky takes him back to their boyhood, but childhood innocence flies out the door when he sees Bucky's tongue dart out to swipe a bead of water from his lower lip. Steve just spit up some of that same water, but something in his gut twists and he wants to know if it would taste different on Bucky's mouth. He has one hand locked on Bucky's wrist and the other pressing down on the cap of his shoulder and he's stopped moving entirely, riveted. He doesn't want to let go, the feel of skin against skin is too good, even when Bucky gives him a lifted brow look.

Bucky twists free and tries to duck Steve again while he's distracted. Steve wriggles free and grabs Bucky around the waist in a tackle that sends water up on all sides of them and makes Bucky yell before they go under. Steve lets go when the water closes over their heads, but they're still in contact, and the fleeting touch of Bucky's half hard cock takes Steve by surprise.

Not worth thinking about, he assures himself as he kicks back to the surface. He's half way erect himself, it's just a physiological reaction, it's been a long time for both of them, the water feels good, another body against his feels good. Bucky's probably thinking about the pretty Resistance girl, Renée, about the last time he felt the touch of someone's skin against his own, of soft curves and small, nimble hands, and that damned perfume – The flash of harsh jealousy her memory prompts astounds Steve.

He shakes his head and decides he isn't going to think about her or that any more. Instead, he takes off after Bucky, who is trying to swim away to the rest of the guys.

"Oh, no," Steve calls out, "you're not getting away that easy."

Bucky kicks harder, but Steve's a faster swimmer now and catches up. He wraps his arms around Bucky and holds on while treading water with his chest pressed against Bucky's back.

Bucky shudders. "Let go," he insists.

"Not yet." Steve grins.

Bucky kicks at Steve's shin, but the water cushions the impact and Steve just laughs and squeezes Bucky tighter.

His hands are on Bucky's chest, arms holding Bucky's arms to his side, absently rubbing his palms over Bucky's skin while Bucky makes half-hearted attempts to break free. Steve's enjoying the water slick slide, the cool shock and rapid warming where his body presses against Bucky's. It isn't any more conscious than the pleasure he'd take in petting Cat back at HQ – when the contrary animal ever allows anyone but Bucky and Col. Phillips that privilege. Bucky's breathing hard from the roughhousing, his chest lifting and falling, the water swirling around their lazily kicking legs and Steve's heart is matching the same rhythm.

Bucky stops moving, maybe he's exhausted. His head falls back for a second to rest against Steve's shoulder just above the water line, wet hair slick and cool against Steve's neck and jaw. Steve starts to turn his face toward Bucky's to grin at him but Bucky twitches, threatens to submerge and Steve tightens his hold instead.

An aborted sound like a bitten-back moan tears free of Bucky's chest as Steve's hands slip and brush across Bucky's nipples.

That sound shivers through Steve and he feels the smile on his face slip. He can't help reliving the last time he heard a sound like that, to the sound of Bucky and Renée together, creaking bedsprings, the sweat slick slap of their bodies together. Bucky's moan makes Steve's face grow hot and his cock twitch, remembering his own reaction. Bucky's moan now has to mean that Steve's accidental touch made Bucky think of Renée. Steve feels an irrational urge to take Bucky's mind off of it. His body reacts to the memory and his current position means Bucky has to feel it as his cock twitches and stiffens against Bucky's ass. He's embarrassed, but not enough to move away entirely. After all, he's felt Bucky half-hard earlier, too.

Bucky's heart hammers under his hand as his chest rises and falls. It's only when Bucky says, quiet and urgent, "Steve, please, you have to stop," that Steve realizes that Bucky has gone rigid in his hold. Bucky's breath hitches, his voice is a low whisper when he adds, "You don't know what you're doing to me."

Doing? What is he doing that would –

"Hey! Barnes!" Gabe shouts from out in the deeper water.

Bucky flinches as though somebody slapped him. His hands fly to Steve's wrists.

"Some help over here!" Gabe adds. "You too, Cap! You can try drowning Sarge later. We've got a mission going: Operation Hat Back needs more men."

"Can't handle it without us, huh?" Bucky yells back. He keeps treading water in front of Steve. The movement brings his ass against Steve's cock again and again and Steve has to bite his lip and force himself not to react. This shouldn't feel as good as it does and he definitely shouldn't feel a strong wave of anger aimed at Gabe for interrupting the strange, charged moment he and Bucky just shared.

Bucky locks his hands over Steve's wrists and Steve doesn't know if it is to hold them in place or try to push Steve's arms loose.

Dum-Dum shouts in outrage and the others howl with laughter. "Give it back, you little weasel!" Dum-Dum bellows and thrashes awkwardly toward Jim, who's holding Dum-Dum's hat high in one hand.

"Naw," Gabe calls to Bucky. "Just needed a distraction."

"Now, now, Dum-Dum," Jim teases, "careful, you don't want to get your hat wet."

"One drop, Morita, just one drop and I'll – "

Steve chuckles against Bucky's neck. He can tell that Bucky and he are forgotten for the time being as the other men's attention returns to the game of hat keep-away. It's a lot kinder spirited than the bullying Steve had endured before Bucky showed up in his life, because unlike the kids back then, Steve knows that there is no chance that anyone here will let anything happen to Dum-Dum's beloved Bowler. It's become as much a talisman to the team as Steve's shield has.

Steve starts to say as much when, without a warning, one of Bucky's stronger kicks in the water presses him back against Steve's chest and groin. Bucky is close, suddenly so snug against Steve that his buttocks part for Steve's embarrassing hard-on. It feels as if everything slows to a stop. Steve's heart slams against his chest and hot, mortified shame flushes his cheeks. There is no way Bucky isn't feeling this, he'd have to be dead to miss it. Steve tries to discreetly move away, but Bucky... Bucky takes a breath like a dying man, then he goes still, no longer moving except for one barely there, slow roll of his ass against Steve's groin. Steve's cock slides far enough to brush against Bucky's balls, the stimulation of coarse hair giving way to soft skin overwhelming Steve's every sense. He forgets to breathe and loses all track of thought. His chin dips in the water, the depth pulling at him when he forgets to kick, but still he can't let go of Bucky, whose heart thunders under the palm of his hand. A sound is lodged in his throat, the vibration of it travels outward against Steve's hand.

Above them, thunder claps, sudden and unexpected. Steve flinches and loses his hold on Bucky, putting some space between them in an awkward dog paddle. His legs feel like lead and his arms are weak. Beside him, he hears Bucky's breath, heavy as if he just ran a mile. He swims away from Steve and refuses to meet his eyes. Steve can't take that, though, can't stand not knowing what Bucky's thinking, if they're okay, if Bucky hates him for what just happened, so he reaches out for Bucky's shoulder as Bucky tries to swim away from him. "Buck – "

"Let it go, Steve," Bucky pleads, his voice barely above a whisper, "please, just let it go." Steve can't. It's not just that he won't, he _can't_. He's never heard that tone of voice from Bucky before. He pushes through the water and around him to search Bucky's face: Framed by eyelashes spiky from the water, Bucky's eyes look strange. His pupils are blown wide despite the daylight and his lips, those lips Steve has heard many girls back in Brooklyn rhapsodize over, are bitten red. When Steve tries to stop him from moving away, he glides much closer to Bucky in the water and feels something hot and silky nudging his hip. A shudder goes through Bucky and Steve feels his cheeks grow hot again when he realizes that he just brushed against Bucky's cock. Bucky's fully hard cock. 

Steve swallows and hears his throat click. This isn't about Bucky hating Steve, is it? Bucky closes his eyes and lowers his head, mouth under water, a look of self-loathing darkening his face, and Steve can't have that, can't see that look on Bucky's face, because he has no reason to be ashamed. Steve's hard himself after all; all that naked splashing around is bound to get any man going. Steve hasn't had a chance to resort to some self-relief with his hand since that night Bucky was with Renée, between mission planning, being crammed into transports and shared tents and getting shot at, so he doubts Bucky has. Certainly Bucky hasn't had that loose-jointed ease about him that Steve got used to seeing back in Brooklyn when Bucky came home from a date. He's been wound so tight that Steve has started worrying there is something wrong, that Zola had done something, and that that was what had happened with Renée. So it's a relief, actually, to feel Bucky reacting to the unintentional stimulation.

"It's – " Steve begins, then stumbles over his own words, because what the hell is he going to say? It's okay that we're both hard as teenagers? Let's just give each other a hand and be done with it, no need to be embarrassed? "We don't – "

"Cap, catch!" Gabe's sudden shout pierces the air and Steve reacts on instinct, vaults out of the water and catches the Bowler that comes hurtling his way just in time to stop it from hitting the water.

"I'm going to murder you all in your sleep!" Dum-Dum howls.

"If that thunderstorm catches us in the water, you won't have to," Bucky calls back to him. "Hey, Dum-Dum, let's see who's on the shore first, your hat or you!" He takes the hat from Steve, puts it on and starts to stroke hard toward the shore. 

Dum-Dum starts an awkward dog-paddle in Bucky's direction, splashing, spluttering, and muttering under his breath.

Lightning flickers along the boiling dark clouds on the horizon. They're moving visibly fast. The wind picks up, whipping the lake. The first crack of thunder, loud as an artillery strike, makes all of them flinch. Steve may never hear thunder as thunder again. A spatter of rain blows in, plopping little craters into the surface of the water that ripple away into nothing a second later. 

They do not want to be in the water if lightning hits the lake. The trees won't be much better or safer. "Head for the farm!" Steve yells and strikes out for the shore after Bucky and Dum-Dum. The others follow him.

It's coming down harder even in the minute it took Steve to reach the shore. The thunderclouds cloak the day in sudden darkness and the air has gone from humid enough to cook to chilly. Everything flares white as another lightning strike hits, so close this time the electricity makes every hair on Steve's body vibrate, the thunderclap deafening and immediate. The bright, blinding after-glare makes him blink and struggle to see through it.

Dernier and Gabe clamber out of the water, stumbling and cursing, with Monty and Jim right behind them, and race for the haphazard piles of clothes and boots and gear they left behind. It's all soaked and muddy though and impossible to pull on with any kind of speed. Dum-Dum gets his feet in his boots, though. Steve doesn't even know where his clothes fell.

Booming, deafening rolls of thunder drown out everything else.

"RUN!" Bucky shouts and waves toward the farm.

Gabe shrieks, grabs his clothes and starts running toward the farm. Jim, Dernier, Dum-Dum and Monty follow him. Steve and Bucky bring up the rear, dodging between the trees, though they could easily keep up if they tried. They pause at the edge of the trees and Steve has to laugh out loud. The hilarity of those seasoned fighters running away from a downpour, bare asses flashing at Steve, and Dum-Dum's stupid hat bobbing over the tall grass, makes him laugh so hard he's incapable of moving.

"Come on, you idiot," Bucky shouts over a clap of thunder and grabs Steve's arm with one hand while holding his rifle with the other. "Even you won't survive a lightning strike."

Steve lets himself be pulled along and then he, too, is running naked through the tall grass. Some of it is sharp-leafed instead of soft and cuts his legs and stomach. Halfway to the buildings, he realizes that he forgot about his shield, but it's too late to turn back now, Bucky's grip on his arm leaves no room for discussions.

Bucky pulls him into the nearest building they reach that still has a roof and slams the door shut behind them. It's dark and stuffy inside, but more or less dry, and the scent of hay, dry wood from the ceiling beams, and dust hang heavy in the air. The downpour turns the daylight into a murky dusk and makes it hard to see the inside of the barn. Each blinding lightning flash, however, flares through the cracks in the wooden walls and makes the swirling dust glitter like shredded silver.

A sudden, forceful gust of wind blows the barn door wide open and drives rain inside. Steve pushes against it, blocks the door and motions for Bucky to retreat further into the dusty warmth of the interior, toward where Steve can just make out stacks of hay on the ground. Lightning and thunder come quicker now, bright rattle and menacing boom. The electricity from the storm slithers over his skin, raising – even wet – the hair along his arms and legs. Next to him, over the tell-tale drip-drip-drip that gives way a hole in the roof, he can hear Bucky breathe faster.

He turns to Bucky with a grin and a cocky comment on his lips and finds Bucky highlighted by the ever-faster flickering of the lightning. Bucky is still; he's just staring at Steve. The words die on Steve's lips. Bucky's eyes are large and dark and terrified, yet his chin and mouth have that resolute set that Steve has only seen when he's pushing himself past fear and into a battle. Steve feels his smile slip away in increments.

"What?" he asks, concern flaring sharp. "What's – " but before he can finish his sentence, Bucky moves, crowds into Steve's personal space, locks both hands against Steve's cheeks and slants his lips over Steve's. 

Steve freezes and Bucky sucks in a breath, presses closer to Steve, and Steve steadies him with his hands on Bucky's waist without thinking. Bucky's skin is hot and rain-slick, the touch of his bare cock a startling pressure against Steve's hip. "Please," Bucky murmurs against Steve's lips, his voice a desperate rasp. His breath smells of apples. "Please, just this once."

Steve pulls back a fraction, tries to say, "Bucky, I – " but Bucky crowds even closer to him. Steve has never been this aware of Bucky's body before.

"Please, Steve," Bucky whimpers, sounding only half coherent, "please." He kisses Steve again, desperate, yet with such gentleness that Steve feels himself break open. Shocking, shivering arousal floods his veins and, suddenly, Steve can't breathe for the feelings choking him. 

He tears his mouth away from Bucky's and buries his face in the crook where Bucky's neck meets his shoulder, clutching Bucky to him and trying to remember how to breathe. He stares into the darkness of the barn and can't hear the thunderstorm over the rushing of blood in his ears, his whole being and all his attention zeroed in on Bucky. This isn't who he is, and it's not who he thought Bucky was. It's nothing he should be doing or enjoying, but he couldn't stop now even if he wanted to, because this is _Bucky_ , and Bucky needs this, _asked_ for this, and he has never in his life denied Bucky anything he truly needed. Not when it's his to give. But it's more than that, he realizes as he slides his hands up Bucky's back and breathes in the scent of sun-kissed skin, lake and rainwater, and something that's purely Bucky. 

Even if he never allowed himself the idea of being with another man before, never acknowledged any strange urges he may have had, he shocks himself with not _wanting_ to deny Bucky. Something finally clicks, all the sidelong glances, the aborted touches, the way Bucky averts his eyes when Steve looks his way.

"Bucky," he breathes against the side of Bucky's neck, hears his own voice sound low and rough to his own ears. Bucky shudders against him, takes a breath like an anguished gasp, and then he urges Steve's head back up, searches his lips, licks into his mouth and kisses him; deep, wet, needy. He sucks on Steve's tongue and Steve feels as if his groan rises from the bottom of his soul. He can't get close enough. He forgets about the others and he forgets about how a Hydra search party might find them or how lightning might strike and set the barn on fire.

All that matters is Bucky and the way their kisses and the touch of their skin fires a feverish need in Steve – to be with Bucky, touch him, kiss him, hold him, assure him that this is what Steve wants as well and that it's going to be all right.

The storm outside continues unabated and yet, during a break between two thunderclaps Steve is suddenly aware of how much he can hear: the rustle of mice in the loft, the _shoo-hoo_ noise of a lone barn owl in the rafters, the creaking of the walls when the wind hits, a loose shutter banging on the empty barn. Then a fresh clap of thunder peals out and Steve jumps. He clutches at Bucky and laughs, feeling sheepish.

Bucky uses the distraction and falls to his knees in front of Steve with a dull thud that makes Steve worry for him. He curls his hand around Bucky's head, slides his fingers into his still-damp hair and cradles his skull, steadying him, but the concern dissipates into arousal when Bucky leans forward and brushes heated kisses along Steve's stomach. Bucky's gasping against Steve's hip, his breath warm and wet and it sounds too much like a sob.

Steve knows where this is going, and anticipation has his cock going from half-mast to a full erection but his mind is lagging behind because this is Bucky and Bucky can't, he can't possibly…

But he is. Bucky is breathing in deep – smelling him, and oh, God, Bucky's low hum of arousal is like a punch to the stomach – brushing his lips along Steve's cock. Steve thinks, hopes, he'll stop there because he's not sure he can take much more without embarrassing himself, but Bucky is parting his lips, dry skin giving way to warm wetness. Steve can see Bucky looking up at him. His breath stutters. Bucky keeps looking up while he takes Steve into his mouth, sliding down inch by torturous inch, his lips stretched around Steve's cock. Bucky's eyes flutter shut then and he groans. The reverberation races all along Steve's skin and his knees threaten to buckle, overwhelmed by the feeling of silky wet heat around his cock and Bucky's eyes on him. It's the dirtiest and best kind of pornography and Steve doesn't know how to breathe.

All thoughts fly out of his head when Bucky starts to suck, though, and Steve's eyes roll back in his head at the wave of pleasure that rushes over him and sets his skin on fire. His hands in Bucky's hair flex and Bucky sighs when Steve pulls some of the strands tight. Bucky's cheeks hollow inward as he sucks; the feel and the look of it threatens to overwhelm him. Bucky's mouth on him, intent on pulling an orgasm out of him, tugs at his balls and tightens his abdomen. The muscles inside his thighs quiver when Bucky does a thing with his tongue. Steve bites back a curse. 

Jesus, what is Bucky _doing_ , how does he even know how to do this? Bucky just takes him deep in his throat and braces his hands on Steve's hips and moans when Steve can't stop his hips from thrusting forward and Bucky swallows around him and _oh, oh, God_ , he can feel his muscles all locking up, the unmistakable sensation of everything narrowing down just before he comes, feel the building pressure. 

Not long now and he's going to come, harder than he ever has in his life. This is Bucky, God, this is _Bucky_ giving him this and Steve can't catch his breath, the damp air saws into his dry, tight throat and out again in huge gasps. He has to, has to touch Bucky, so he finds Bucky's hand locked on his hip and twines the fingers of his hand in Bucky's, still pressing it against himself. It's a struggle, but Steve forces himself to hold his hips still, he doesn't want to choke Bucky even if Bucky doesn't seem to care.

In a strobe of lightning, Bucky's eyes are the color of the thunderclouds, changeable, fringed in those long lashes of his, but all Steve sees is despair and fear that he might be rejected after all, and that stops Steve cold.

It's physically one of the hardest things he's ever done, and all he wants to do is come with that perfect mouth around him, yet Steve takes a step back. His cock slips from Bucky's mouth and he wants to cry out at the loss. Bucky tries to follow, his swollen red lips so erotic Steve almost gives in, but that look of despair in Bucky's eyes makes Steve stop him. He takes a steadying breath, curls his hand around Bucky's neck, then slips to his knees as well. His cock brushes against his stomach, hot and so hard it hurts, but Steve's not going to let Bucky god damn _service_ him. He won't let him get lost inside his own head.

"Buck," he says, stroking his fingers through Bucky's slowly drying hair, trailing his fingertips over his cheek. It's rough with stubble, but there's a smooth patch where he presses the butt of his rifle. Bucky's eyes are closed, but he leans into the touch. "Bucky." Steve leans in, brushes a kiss across Bucky's lips and another until he feels Bucky begin to shake. "Just let me… " Steve trails off, unsure of how to put into words what's so clear in his mind. He forces the words out, though, clumsy and unfamiliar as they are. "You've gotta let me love you back."

Bucky breathes in, sharp, and murmurs something under his breath that Steve doesn't catch over a fresh clap of thunder. 

He feels as clumsy as his words sounded, but Bucky needs to know that Steve doesn't need him to prove anything. It's _Bucky_ , and all the inexplicable urges he's felt slot into place; Steve realizes that he's already there. He has always loved Bucky as his best friend, but the step toward more was taken months ago. He pulls Bucky against him and shudders a little at the feel of Bucky's hot skin and soft body hair brushing his cock, at the hard line of pressure of Bucky's own cock against Steve's hip. He closes his arms around Bucky and buries his nose back in the spot where Bucky's neck meets his shoulder and just inhales. Bucky's breath hitches and he flexes his hands against Steve's back, the pressure just the wrong side of pleasant.

"Talk to me, Buck," Steve urges and Bucky presses his face against Steve's hair, panting as if he's just run a mile.

"I love you," Bucky murmurs against Steve's scalp, so soft that Steve barely hears it, but the quiet admission throws Steve off balance. Knowing is one thing. Hearing it is an entirely different animal. "I just need you to know, to remember. Whatever comes. Remember." Bucky pushes back, takes Steve's hands in his own and continues without looking at Steve, "Remember."

"How could I forget?" Steve tries to add some levity to his words but they fall horribly flat and he winces. "I know," he adds instead. "I do." 

He got what he asked for, he thinks, the sorcerer's apprentice not knowing how to stop the spell, and now he doesn't know how to respond.

Bucky brushes the back of his hand over Steve's cock then and Steve bites back on a gasp. Maybe it's easier to show Bucky how he feels.

So he stretches out a hand to feel the hay behind him and then sinks back against it, pulling Bucky with him and the feel of Bucky's body stretched out over him, familiar yet unfamiliar with dense muscles pressing him down into the hay, is a revelation. Bucky's skin is hot and soft, a thin sheen of sweat slicking the small of his back, where Steve feels it stretch over hard muscles and delicate shoulderblades.

He kisses Bucky again, long, deep, and without any finesse, teeth and lips and tongue meeting. He feels Bucky's hips seek friction, moves his ass a little and feels his cock brush Bucky's; he gasps and at the same time tastes the whimper that rises from Bucky's throat. When they finally break apart, Bucky doesn't waste time. He slides down in a torturously perfect glide of skin on skin and trails kisses along Steve' face and neck, prompting Steve to shudder and buck his hips. 

"Do you know how much I hate this war?" Bucky murmurs into the kisses. "How much I hate that we can't do this instead of fighting, risking our lives every day?"

"Buck," Steve tries, cupping his hand around the vulnerable curve of Bucky's skull, but Bucky shuts him up with a swift, hard kiss to his mouth before he goes back to nibbling his way down Steve's throat and his chest. Steve relaxes a little, but he can feel the muscles in Bucky's back taut under his hands. 

"Phillips offered me a ticket home," Bucky whispers; the revelation of something Steve already knew sounds like it costs Bucky a lot. "And," he kisses Steve's sternum, then brushes the palm of his hand over Steve's nipples, making him shudder with want. Bucky doesn't continue, but Steve knows what he was going to say. Steve had already known, back in Brooklyn, how much Bucky hated the idea of the war. Seeing actual battle only made that hatred worse. The see-saw between Bucky's words and the way he telegraphs need with his body at the same time makes Steve dizzy. 

Bucky shakes his head as if to clear his mind and shifts to the side a little, then runs his hand down Steve's side and to his groin and then, with an unerring grip, firmly wraps his hand around Steve's cock.

Steve closes his eyes and groans out loud. He thinks that if it weren't raining so hard, that sound give them both away even with the others in a different building. He pushes that thought and the sharp jab of fear it evokes away, pushes up into the tight, firm grip of Bucky's hand, and feels his stomach muscles quiver and his balls tighten. He was close before and it's not going to take much now, but he wants to make it last, wants to catalogue the feel of Bucky's hot, moist breath on his skin, the tickle of Bucky's chest-hair against his arm, the way Bucky's scent changes and the way he rubs his own hard cock against Steve's hip.

Unable to take it any longer, Steve clutches at Bucky's ass to bring Bucky closer to him, let him rut against Steve's body, feel more, faster, more. The blood begins to rush in Steve's ears again, drowning out the sounds of the barn and the rain.

Bucky snaps his hips forward, sliding his cock between Steve's thighs and though it's a struggle when all he wants to do is wrap his legs around Bucky, Steve takes the hint, keeps his thighs pressed together to give Bucky a place to thrust into. Bucky's breath hitches, and he lowers his head, then, like an electric shock to Steve's entire system, licks his silky wet tongue over Steve's left nipple.

He barely makes out the words Bucky murmurs against his chest. "Couldn't go." Steve tries to make his mind triumph over his body, but it's a losing battle. "Home wasn't back in Brooklyn anymore," Steve hears and he wants to acknowledge this, wants to say something in return, but Bucky scrapes his teeth over Steve's nipple and sucks, hard and sudden. He twists his hand around Steve's cock and, without a warning, everything in Steve tightens, teeters on the edge. He stops breathing, heart slamming against his chest, fingers biting into Bucky's ass. It’s just, _just_ \-- Bucky repeats the gentle scrape of his teeth over his nipple and pushes his cock deeper between Steve's legs, brushing against Steve's balls, and Steve falls over the edge, coming with a hoarse, drawn-out sound, hard and blinding. 

Bucky surges up and kisses him through it, breathing air back into his lungs when Steve can't find it. Air and words Steve can only make out and make sense of when the sounds of his own, labored breathing quiet. 

"Even in this hell, home will always be with you," Bucky whispers against his lips and Steve feels as if somebody dumped a bucket full of ice over him. The sated, jelly-like feeling in his muscles and bones is replaced by an awful tension and the sinking feeling to his stomach. What had they done to him? What had they done in Zola’s lab that Bucky feels he is in hell, always, even now, even when all the horrors are locked out, miles away? A universe away, or so it feels to Steve. 

_Come back to me,_ Steve pleads inside his head but feels reluctant to say out loud, unsure what Bucky will do if Steve acknowledges what Bucky said.

So instead, he pushes Bucky onto his back and lavishes all his attention, all the tenderness of which he's capable, on Bucky. He explores the beauty of Bucky's body with his hands and lips, murmurs reassurances under his breath that he's with Bucky: that he won't let him go, that he'll guide him out of whatever hell he's in. 

Bucky shivers with pleasure, so receptive of every small thing Steve does, but he never stops reaching out, touches and caresses Steve in a way that makes Steve's skin sing. It floors Steve how tender Bucky is, how, now that all his masks are off, the man Steve thought hardened and calloused by the war is so gentle and affectionate. It makes Steve's eyes prickle with tears. The dusky light steals the color from everything, but it can't hide how Bucky's lean muscles are too close to the bone, when he's not hidden by his uniform. Even drawn taut with need, body shaking with it, and hard as a stone, Bucky keeps running his hands over Steve's body and keeps his eyes open and on Steve. He looks like he wants to burn this into his memory, as if he'll need to live off it. Steve needs to kiss him, tells him with his lips and his tongue, wordless, that he doesn't have to worry, that he can have this whenever he wants, whenever he needs.

Bucky seems to understand, and when the kiss ends, his hands skitter over Steve, almost disbelieving, then clutch when Steve closes his hand around Bucky's cock and slides his thumb over the tip, spreading the moisture beading there. Bucky's grip is tight enough to bruise.

One open-mouthed kiss to the side of his neck, one gentle finger traced along the soft heat of his balls and Bucky is tensing up, spilling warm and wet between their bodies with a groan that sounds pained and desperate. 

He shakes after, so Steve holds him, both of them breathing hard, and wraps around him as much as he can so Bucky feels all of him. He keeps whispering, "It's okay, I'm here,. You and me, Bucky, you and me." He says, "We're going to be okay, we're going to be together and we’re going to go home." Or was it more than that? Could it be, had he always wanted Bucky as more and just didn't understand? What would that mean? "We will, " Steve promises. "We will, you and me."

The feel of Bucky shaking his head and curling into Steve's embrace makes the words die on Steve's lips.

In time, Bucky slips into an uneasy sleep, while Steve lies awake, holding him, stroking his hair back from his brow while his own thoughts race. He can't stop them tumbling around in his mind, or the worry this is the only time Bucky will want this.

Worrying how they'll hide it if it _isn't_ the only time. Because they can't… Maybe the Commandos will understand – and he's not so sure about that, either, there have been enough casual jabs against queers – but the rest of the Army – the world – won't.

The thought that keeps him from falling asleep, chilling him to the bone, is the memory of Bucky shaking his head, making Steve wonder if Bucky ever really left Zola's lab.

***

Bucky is gone when Steve wakes and he wonders if he dreamt what happened. But he's naked in a barn with hay sticking into his skin and the evidence of their activities dried and tacky on his stomach.

Outside, rain still falls, gentle and steady now. Golden evening light filters through the cracks in the wall. It is beautiful and peaceful, but Bucky is gone. Maybe it was just a one-time thing to Bucky, a desperate reaching out in a moment of weakness, never to be repeated. Bucky's not dumb, after all. What they did is a criminal offense, no matter how good, how right it felt.

The drawn-out, protesting creak of the old barn door opening speeds up Steve’s heartbeat and he contemplates burrowing in the hay to hide, until Bucky appears in the open doorway, back in his uniform and carrying another bundle of clothes as well as Steve's shield. Behind him, the meadow is steaming, rain evaporating from the too hot earth.

Bucky drops his clothes back on the ground with a wet splotch with a disgusted huff. "If it stays this humid, it's going to take days to dry."

"The uniform dries quicker," Steve points out. It is a new material Stark specifically made for it. "You're welcome to wear it." He has to say something because he can't take this uncertainty. Is Bucky all right with what happened or is he compartmentalizing already?

"While you parade around naked?" Bucky snorts. "I'm not sure anyone's delicate sensibilities would survive that blow to their ego." 

That statement sounds wrong and Steve shifts from one foot to the other, all too aware of his nudity. "Come on, Buck, it's not like you have anything to be ashamed of."

Bucky raises an eyebrow at him. "Are you sweet-talking me, Rogers?"

Steve, unwilling to back down from the dare, raises an eyebrow in return. "Do I have to?"

Bucky's cocky façade slips and he runs his right hand over his face. "God, no."

Steve frowns in concern. "Buck – "

"Don't," Bucky says, surging forward and placing his fingertips over Steve's lips. "Don't tell me you regret – "

Steve's knees wobble with relief, yet at the same time he can't take the readiness with which Bucky expects rejection, so he mimics Bucky's gesture and rests his fingertips on Bucky's lips as well. "Something tells me we're both better at not talking," Steve says, then takes his hand away and kisses Bucky.

Steve hears the others laughing and singing nearby and doesn’t care, while he stretches Bucky out on the hay and undoes him with his hands and his mouth. Bucky gasps Steve's name into the darkness of the barn, over and over again, like a mantra.

The rain stops sometime around nightfall.

Bucky goes down on Steve when Steve has already begun to drift, while up in the rafters, bats begin to circle and the distant sound of a church bell ringing twelve times carries through the damp air. Bucky's mouth is hot and urgent and demanding, and Steve has no will left to fight it, too overwhelmed by sensations. When he comes, he bites the back of his hand to keep from shouting his pleasure.

Steve never stops running his hand over Bucky's skin after and wonders how they'll go on from here. Eventually he thinks that it doesn't matter as long as they can stay close to one another. 

They fall asleep, pressed against each other, feeling each other's heartbeat.


	8. November 1944, Italy - Evening

**November 1944, Italy**

**Evening**

It's a _chateau_ , Dernier declares as they open the door to the secluded wooden house in the Alps, not a farmhouse. And this chateau is – at least while they wait for Peggy to call in their exact rendezvous point, and for the duration of the snowstorm outside – theirs.

After the trouble they had getting here, the snow, the empty bellies, cold camps, and constantly dodging German patrols, the empty farmhouse – "Chateau," Dernier insists – feels like a blessing, a Christmas present that arrived early.

Bucky snipes a wild boar that ventures too close to the chateau and Gabe and Dernier prove that they can cook. Before dinner, everyone takes the chance to wash up and as a result, they're all clean under their uniforms for the first time in what feels like forever. They have full bellies and leftovers to last them until the storm blows past. Warm, fed, clean and content, they're also three sheets to the wind. On his hunt for cooking ingredients, Gabe found the wine cellar and a barrel of Cognac. Steve has never cared for liquor, his smaller body hadn't handled hard alcohol well, and he's never really liked the taste. He barely feels its effects now. That doesn't stop the others from refilling his glass along with theirs again and again. Steve’s ma would’ve called them drunk as skunks. Drunk enough, that Dum-Dum takes the unmarked bottle he decided had to contain a fine wine, uncorks it and takes a deep swig. He spews a greenish-yellow stream of liquid into the fireplace just a blink of an eye later, making the fire flare up. He spits several times, muttering under his breath.

Dernier laughs so hard he nearly chokes on his drink. Gabe translates what Dernier doesn't say, "You can store more than booze in a cellar, Dugan."

Dum-Dum gives the bottle an offended look and seems ready to throw it into the fire when Bucky stops him, sniffs at the bottle and re-corks it. "Olive oil. Might use that for cooking later."

Dum-Dum's eyebrows shoot upwards. "You can cook? How come you never said so?"

"If you want to call that cooking," Steve says under his breath.

"Got you through the winters, didn't it?" Bucky asks, grinning. He doesn't look offended.

Steve notices that Bucky's slipped the bottle into his jacket pocket and raises a questioning eyebrow at him. Bucky shrugs and reaches for the next shot Jim pushes at him.

Bucky looks tipsy, red-cheeked and grinning, his pupils blown wide, his lips moist as he slams back shot after shot, but he’s still steadier than any of the others. Something pulls tight in Steve's gut when he thinks of the times those lips have stretched around his cock in quiet corners behind buildings, with the Commandos laughing too close by, and himself desperately biting his hand to keep from making a sound. 

He forces his gaze away from Bucky and stares into the fire instead, afraid he’ll give himself away. It is always Bucky on his knees, never him. He never lets Steve reciprocate, claims with a shrug that he takes care of himself. Steve's not the only one not fully comfortable with the newfound revelation about his sexuality. They haven't had many chances to be together since that night in the barn – nothing but rushed blowjobs behind buildings or rutting against each other with Steve’s back against a tree – always worrying they'll be caught. Always clothed, always so ready to spring apart and act as if nothing is going on between them. It's going to drive him insane. He craves the feel of Bucky against him, all of him, and to find a less desperate pace. He wants to really enjoy what they have now, every day without hiding. He's not sure what the others would do if they knew about him and Bucky, though. He hopes they'd be tolerant, but he'd rather not test his faith in his team. It's an unspoken agreement between Bucky and him: they can still claim that they're just relieving tension, even if Steve knows in his heart that it's a lie. He doesn't know how he got there, how he got from loving Bucky as his best friend to loving him in this new, different way, but he knows he can’t keep up a lie indefinitely.

As he watches his men get plastered, Steve considers the sleeping accommodations. The chateau and their state might just be a sign from heaven. He doesn't like himself for the thought, but when he looks back at Bucky licking his lips after yet another shot of cognac, he wishes that the others would finally drink each other under the table.

The men finally call it quits when Gabe's head sinks to the table and he starts to snore. Dernier drags him to the sofa and drops him there like a sack of potatoes. Monty gets up, swaying like a ship in a storm, eyes glazed. Steve reaches for his arm with a laugh when Monty can't walk in a straight line and shepherds him along. Jim sings loudly, louder when Dum-Dum joins in, and those two totter off to their room arm in arm. Bucky follows them with a candle held high to provide some meager light, chuckling, guiding them when they threaten to crash into the doorframe.

They stand in the middle of the room, both of them singing at the top of their lungs, while Steve drops Monty into bed. 

"How about changing to a lullaby, boys?" Bucky asks.

"Jimmy boy." Dum-Dum lets go of Jim and throws his arm around Bucky, who has to move the candle so Dum-Dum doesn't get burnt. "You drank as much as his Royal Highness there." He sniggers at his own joke, then turns to face Bucky, looking glassy-eyed. "I have no idea how you're still," he wobbles against Bucky, "still standing."

"Sheer willpower." Bucky grins. "Something you're sorely lacking."

Dum-Dum looks offended for a second, then he gives a braying laugh. "You're my best friend, Jimmy-boy, you know that?" He pokes a finger against Bucky's sternum, giggling. "Because you're funny."

"Can't be yours if I'm already Steve's," Bucky answers and claps his hand against Dum-Dum's chest. "Mustn't cheat on him. He's possessive like that."

Steve's ears start to heat. He can't help but wonder if it's the alcohol that's making Bucky toe the line.

Dum-Dum looks between Steve and Bucky now and gives them a soppy grin. "You and Cap," he slurs. "You're like – "

"Like the people who will stuff your drunk asses into bed," Bucky finishes the sentence and does just that – he pushes at Dum-Dum, who promptly lists into bed and starts to snore as soon as his head hits the pillow.

"Have fun in your room," Jim snorfles from his pillow and Steve freezes. Cold sweat breaks out along his back. He wonders if Jim knows, if Bucky was too direct with his teasing. Jim starts to snore as well, though. Steve unclenches his jaw. Whatever it is Jim saw or thinks he saw will be lost in the hangover he'll have in the morning.

Bucky grins at their three teammates as he pulls the door shut behind him. He slings an arm around Steve's waist, bumps his hip against Steve's from the side and says, "How about some fun in our room?"

In the pitch-black corridor, Bucky's candle is the only light-source. Steve gives him a surprised look. Bucky’s never been this demonstrative before – with good reason. 

"They're out like lights," Bucky continues. "Nothing short of an earthquake will wake them until noon tomorrow. So unless you plan to make the whole place shake – "

Bucky's eyes are dark and glittering in the light of the candle. His whole mood is lighter than usual and his smile is teasing and suggestive. Steve fights the urge to whoop or push Bucky against the wall right there in the hallway. They have an actual bed to themselves for the next couple of nights, after all. Not knowing when such an opportunity will present itself again, he wants to make up for lost time – in the past and the future. "Not the place, no," he says and grins at Bucky, whose answering smile brightens the hallway. Steve can't wait to taste that smile.

There are only two bedrooms in the house, the one with three single beds, probably meant for kids or servants, which Dum-Dum, Jim and Monty claimed. There are two large sofas in the main room with its huge fireplace. Gabe and Dernier plonked down on those. Then there’s the master bedroom. Steve went straight to the kitchen when they got here, his stomach demanding all his attention and never saw it. He pushes the door open, Bucky walks inside, raises the candle and… Steve understands Jim's sniggering comment from before.

The bed is a monstrosity.

"Good God," Steve says, taking in the four posters, the canopy, the powder blue color and the large, intricate, and horribly colorful painting at the foot of the bed. 

"It goes on up there," Bucky informs him. He places the candle on the nightstand and jumps on the thick, puffed up feather duvet that rises like a mountain to his left and right. The candle throws a gentle, flickering light on him.

"Please tell me the duvet is as warm as it looks, at least." The room is freezing cold. He understands why Gabe and Frenchie didn't want to leave the main room with its fireplace. The other bedroom will get heat from the main room, but the master bedroom is at the end of the hallway. It's a little too reminiscent of the winter they didn't have enough money for coal and they'd wake up in the mornings to a freezing room. Despite his body temperature running higher now, Steve shivers.

"Won't find that out until we're under it." Bucky's waggling his eyebrows.

"What are we waiting for, then? If I look at this thing for too much longer, I'm not going to get in it at all," Steve says, still shuddering at the hideous bed. It's sturdy at least and unlikely to break under his weight.

Bucky strips, quick and efficient in the icy cold room and gets ready to slip underneath the duvet with its stark white linen covers. Steve can't help but look, because Bucky's different tonight, whether it's the booze or the knowledge that they have a few nights ahead of them in actual bed, Steve can't tell. The candlelight glints on the threads of bronze in Bucky's loose and disheveled hair, it traces phantom expressions and shadows over his face. His nipples have tightened to dark little nubs and his skin, turned golden and beautiful as a renaissance statue, but better with his dusting of dark hair on his chest and legs, is covered in gooseflesh. Steve has to look away and focus on the task at hand when all he wants to do is warm Bucky up, make that gooseflesh disappear, and chase the shadows with his lips until he drives them away too. He only had a small taste of it back at the barn yet he misses Bucky's skin, Bucky's body naked against his. He can't wait to feel it all night long, to wake up wrapped around Bucky in the morning.

He's just about to unlace his boots when he hears Bucky yelp. 

He looks scandalized when Steve looks up. "Damn, those sheets are cold," he exclaims. Little white puffs accentuate his words. "And stiff as a board."

"Are you sure it's the sheet?" Steve asks. He's swimming on the wave of levity that's been buoying them all evening and can barely bite back on a smirk when Bucky gapes at him.

"Rogers!" Bucky says, his voice tinged with surprised amusement. "When did you start in on the suggestive jokes?"

"When I joined the Army." Steve shrugs and tries to keep a straight face. "Couldn't keep my virtue. You should have seen the guys from the papers after they first did an interview with me."

Bucky narrows his eyes at Steve. "Are you laughing at me?"

Steve puts on his best innocent face. "I'd never."

"You're laughing at me," Bucky states. "You're laughing at my misery, you little shit." He pulls the duvet up to his chin and reaches for the second one as well to tug it around himself. "I'll keep all the duvets and let you sleep in the cold if you keep laughing."

Steve lifts a brow. "I'd like to see you try."

"Is that a dare, Steven Grant Rogers?"

"More of a fact," Steve says and jumps on the bed. He lands next to Bucky and half on him, and tugs at the blanket.

"What else did you unlearn once you joined the Army?" Bucky asks, sounding appalled. Steve can see the laughter Bucky’s holding back lurking in the corners of his eyes. "Getting into bed with your clothes still on," Bucky admonishes. "I ought to have a word with your boot camp instructors." He shoves at Steve, and it sends Steve tumbling to the scrubbed-clean wooden floorboards. Steve finds himself on his ass in front of the bed and blinks, feeling a little disoriented. He's not used to Bucky out-muscling him anymore.

"Got ya!" Bucky cackles. 

Bucky's nowhere near as drunk as the others, but he's buzzed, loose-limbed. The near-constant shadow around him is missing tonight. Bucky looks happy, playful. He wants to keep that happiness in Bucky, relieve all the burdens he carries, so much it hurts. He shakes his head as though perplexed and masks his slip-up that way. "Dumb luck," he says, shrugging.

"Uh-huh."

Steve leans back on his hands and looks up to where Bucky is eyeing him. Only his eyes and the dark mop of hair are visible.

"So what does a guy have to do to get some – " Bucky pulls down the duvet a little and smirks at him. "Some _sleep,_ " Steve continues pointedly, "around here?"

"Floor not comfortable for you?" Bucky asks. It sounds muffled – he's pulled the duvet back up.

"Oh, very," Steve says and lies back, stretching his arms over his head so his hands scrape over the floorboards. The hemline of his shirt rides up and he feels Bucky's gaze on the strip of revealed skin. The floor is freezing just like the rest of the room, but he'll be damned if he'll admit defeat.

Bucky crawls to the edge of the bed and peers down at Steve. Steve sits up, braced on his elbows. Bucky gives him a cocky grin.

"Looks like that serum didn't enhance everything... " he says suggestively, with a nod to Steve's crotch. The cold is enough his cock and balls want to crawl up inside him, so he's not at his most impressive. Or impressive at all, he has to admit.

He tries to remember when they were last this playful with each other, this suggestive and open. He comes up blank, but doesn't mind the change. "I'll show you – "

"Yeah, why don't you get up here and show me, Rogers," Bucky taunts, still grinning, but he holds the duvet open. "Before your block and tackle freeze off entirely."

Steve scrambles to his feet and tries to get up into the bed, but Bucky drops the duvet again. "Sans clothes," he admonishes.

Steve rolls his eyes, but takes off his shirt and pants. He wants to feel Bucky against his skin more than he wants the meager warmth his clothes supply. Once he's only in his underpants, he gives an exaggerated knock on the duvet. "Is the princess ready to – "

"Oh shut the hell up and get in here," Bucky says, laughing.

Steve dives into the bed and Bucky yelps. "God, you're cold as ice," he says and tries to push Steve away.

"Then you'll have to warm me up, won't you?" he answers and wraps his arms around Bucky, pulls him closer.

Bucky laughs and protests, then he wraps his arms around Steve's waist, rolls them so Steve's on top of him and opens his legs so they slot together.

Steve stills for a few seconds, because even through their boxers, he feels Bucky's cock against his. That part will never get old: the sense of wonder and the sharp spike of lust. Bucky hums under his breath, gives a slow roll of his hips, and runs his hands up Steve's back. He kisses Steve's neck in a way that sends shivers up and down Steve's spine, licks at his collarbone. Steve's too hung up on the sensations to hear what Bucky murmurs against his skin. "Hmn?" he asks after a while.

"I said," Bucky says, running a hand down to Steve's ass to pinch it, "that I'm finally glad for the whole super soldier thing."

"Because of the short refractory period?" Steve teases, a little breathless, and grinds against Bucky. It's something he remembers Caroline appreciating. He could make her come several times without leaving her body. He wonders how it would feel to be inside Bucky the way he was inside of Caroline and his cock twitches while his cheeks flush.

Bucky raises his head to look at Steve and roll his eyes. "No, you jerk, it's because you already would have had pneumonia in a room this cold otherwise."

"I was never _that_ fragile," Steve protests, forcing himself to concentrate on their banter and not on his earlier idea. He's not even sure if Bucky would want that and he's not just going to suggest it.

Bucky chortles and undulates against Steve, sets his open lips against Steve's collarbone, and makes him forget what he was trying to say.

It's that mouth that's going to get him in trouble. Steve groans his appreciation. Bucky's mouth, that wet, hot mouth, and his tongue licking at Steve's skin. It leaves trails of dampness that chill where the duvet doesn't cover them completely and make Steve shudder in the chilled room. 

Bucky rolls them around again but keeps them slotted together, then slowly slides down Steve's body, disappearing under the duvet. His breath is hot on Steve's nipple, his tongue a shocking bit cooler, licking, sucking, swirling, and even humming, as if he's found the tastiest candy in the world. Steve arches his back, Bucky gently worries his nipple between his teeth, and – _Christ, it's been too long_ – he forgot his nipples could feel like that. The sensation shoots straight to his dick and Steve clutches at Bucky's shoulders, unsure whether to push him away or draw him in closer. 

Bucky's hands are all over him, stroking, massaging, caressing. They're callused from years of labor at the docks and from handling his rifle, rough and catching, but so careful at the same time. The paradox makes Steve's head spin. He throws his head back and murmurs Bucky's name, grinds his hard-on against Bucky's dick, and it's not enough, he wants that skin he admired earlier, wants to run his hands over Bucky and chase every single goose bump away, warm Bucky the way Bucky warms him. 

Bucky throws the duvet back around his shoulders, catches Steve's hands and grins at him. That grin truly takes Steve's breath away. It's the way Bucky smiles without sadness behind it, the way he looks in the candle-light: golden and sinfully erotic, teasing and carefree and intent at the same time, the intensity with which Steve wants him, wants to be skin to skin and heart to heart and, well, yes, dick to dick, but it's… more than that. Steve's heart stutters: he loves Bucky. He doesn't just want him, he loves him, is _in_ love with him, and the intensity of it frightens him.

"Bucky," he begins, but Bucky surges up and kisses him and, just as that first kiss, Steve can't resist. Bucky's mouth is generous and so unbelievably soft, he's delicate and tender, teasing and fun and more erotic than anything Steve has ever experienced. He sighs into the kiss, glides his tongue against Bucky's, and runs his hands up Bucky's back and into his hair. Now it's Bucky's turn to groan and Steve takes one of his precious few verbal cues and runs his fingernails over Bucky's scalp, just gentle pressure. Bucky melts against him while his cock stiffens. Monty cut his hair a week ago and the back of his neck is still exposed, none of the slight curls have grown back yet, and Steve scrapes blunt nails over that vulnerable patch of skin. Bucky gasps against his lips and rolls his hips forward. The fabric of their boxers dulls the sensation and Steve growls into Bucky's mouth, then hooks his fingers under Bucky's boxers and tries to push them down. 

Bucky's hipbones may be too sharp now, but his ass is still a work of art, so when Steve has the boxers pushed past Bucky's buttocks, he can't stop himself from grabbing on, rubbing his hands over round warm cheeks that fit into his palms perfectly.

After a few harsh breaths, Bucky raises his head and gives Steve a pointed look. "If you don't remove those boxers soon, it'll be your fault if my dick drops off."

Steve raises an eyebrow at him and pulls the fabric of Bucky's boxers back a bit more, only to get distracted by all that warm skin again. 

Bucky yelps and tries to roll away from Steve. "Focus, you jerk."

Steve grins at him. "Why don't you make me?" he asks and while Bucky tries to come up with a fitting insult, he runs a finger down Bucky's ass and between his legs so he can brush against his balls.

Bucky goes tense, but his dick twitches against Steve's side, and he bites back on a moan. It takes him a few deep breaths before he gives Steve a come-hither look through lowered lashes that has Steve's stomach twisting in anticipation and whispers, "It's on."

"Oh, is it?" Steve asks, and then it really is on, they roll around under the duvet and Bucky's hands begin to dance over his ribs, tickling without mercy and leaving Steve breathless with laughter. They get off both Bucky's and his boxers despite the constant tangling of limbs.

His own skin is hyper-sensitive from the tickling by now and he's about to break and cry uncle. An alarming creak from the bed is the only chance he gets to distract Bucky and he's not going to waste it. He pins Bucky's wrists above his head and straddles him to stop him from moving his legs and while Steve grins at him, Bucky stills. His chest rises and falls. He tries to flex his muscles and free his wrists but Steve holds on, basking in his victory. Bucky tries again; Steve presses him deeper into the mattress. Bucky's eyes widen and high color begins to bloom over his cheekbones. "God, you're — "

"What?" Steve loosens the grip on Bucky's wrists, suddenly concerned.

"No, don't." Bucky squeezes his eyes closed.

"Do you like this?" Steve asks, a little incredulous. Despite Bucky's protest, he slides his palm against Bucky's and slots their fingers together, then holds on again

Bucky's flush deepens and he bites his lip. The goosebumps begin to race over his skin again where the cold air touches him.

"Buck?"

"God help me, yes." From the way the words tumble out of Bucky's mouth, Steve can tell that he'd rather have kept that information to himself. "I know it makes me a pervert, but knowing that you could break me in two if you wanted just… " he trails off and turns his face to the side.

Steve shudders and it's more than the cold of the room. "Except I'd never want to do that. I'd never hurt you."

Bucky opens his eyes and gives him a smile that's skirting too close to melancholy for Steve's liking. "I know," he says.

"And you know why?" Steve asks, desperately trying to get back to the earlier mood. "Because I have a lifetime of you getting hurt for me to make up for."

Bucky opens one eye. "Do we really want to start playing accounting now? I didn't know you had such a dirty mind." The lewd joke falls flat; Steve sees that Bucky, too, is trying to rebuild the earlier mood.

"How about a kiss for each bruise you got because of me back home?" 

Bucky cocks an eyebrow at him. "We might be here a while, pal."

"Good," Steve says and bends forward to press his lips against Bucky's shoulder. He keeps peppering Bucky chest with kisses, moves up to his face and his eyes while Bucky squirms and protests. Steve keeps his hands on Bucky's, holding on gently, no pressure, and brushes his lips over the delicate underside of Bucky's upper arms. 

Bucky squirms and sighs. "Steve," he says. "Really?"

Steve detours from his path to plant a kiss on Bucky's mouth. "Yeah," he whispers against his lips. "Really." Bucky probably thinks he's teasing him, but he's not. He finally has the chance to tell Bucky with his hands and lips what he can't say in words. He moves up to Bucky's hands, releases them, and pulls Bucky's fingers to his mouth. He breathes against the cold digits, warming Bucky's hands.

Bucky breathes in sharply and squeezes his eyes closed. He begins to whine under his breath when Steve sucks one finger after the other into his mouth and then kisses Bucky's palms, praising the hands that have saved him over and over. Bucky writhes and squirms against Steve. The movement drags their cocks against one another and Steve's eyes nearly roll back in his head when he feels Bucky fully hard against him.

Blind with the urge to feel more, he lets go of Bucky's hands and reaches down between their bodies to grasp Bucky's cock. Bucky's breath stutters. He pushes into Steve's hand with a bitten off moan, once, twice, the head of his cock bumping against Steve's stomach.

Steve surges forward to drink that sound from his lips. Bucky opens up for him, gasping when Steve sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and scrapes his teeth over it. He locks his hands around Steve's head and drags him closer, foregoing all gentleness. The kiss turns wet and messy.

As if he's remembering that his hands are free now, Bucky runs his fingers down Steve's back to his ass, squeezing once, then moving between their bodies as well to reach for Steve's cock. Steve forces himself to keep his eyes open, because Bucky's hand, though dry and callused, feels so damn familiar and is so good at pulling pleasure from his body. He bucks into that familiar hand and strips Bucky quicker, too.

Suddenly, Bucky makes a sound under his breath as though in pain and stops Steve's hand from moving. He pants, "Wait, wait, we need – " 

He lets go of Steve and Steve whimpers at the loss. Bucky moves away from him and angles his upper body outside of the bed. Steve has no idea what he's doing there, only that he wants him to stop and get back to what they started.

Bucky curses under his breath and presses his forehead against the mattress when Steve runs just the tip of his finger along the underside of Bucky's cock. "You're killing me," he pants, "I said wait."

Bucky rummages around in his clothes a little while longer, then he finally moves back with a small shout of victory and brandishes a bottle at Steve.

Steve takes in the bottle of olive oil and can't help the startled chuckle that rips free of his chest. "We need that for cooking, huh?"

Bucky gives him a pointed look. "Would you have preferred it if I told them the truth?"

Steve's not going there, he's not going to ruin the mood again, so he fires off the first thing that pops into his mind. "Depends on what your nefarious plan is."

Bucky smirks at him. Then he surges up to whisper words in Steve's ear that make his face flame and his knees weak. "I want to get you so worked up I'll have to kiss you to keep you quiet." Bucky's words are hot puffs of air against oversensitive skin. "And when you have your hand around my dick, slick with this oil, I want you to make me come so hard I see stars.." 

Bucky uncorks the bottle with his teeth and spits the cork out over the edge of the bed. Steve's gaze is drawn to Bucky's mouth around the bottleneck, then to the way he holds one hand open and pours a small stream of the gold-green oil into the cupped palm. The scent of the oil mingles with the scent of Bucky's skin. He sets the bottle on the nightstand, then trails his index finger idly through the oil while he rubs his cock against Steve's thigh in languid, rolling motions. When Steve thinks he can't take the delay any longer, Bucky smirks at him again and reaches for Steve's right hand. He holds it over his oil-slick hand and presses Steve's palm against it. 

Steve groans under his breath, the sensation of the body-warm oil dribbling out from between their hands and gliding between their fingers is incredible.

"Now," Bucky says and reaches for Steve's cock again.

Steve has to bite back on a sob of relief, because, God, that's good, that's so much better than before, even if Bucky's grip is too light now. He takes Bucky's cock into his hand again as well and begins to curl his hand, tight, loose, tight, tighter, until Bucky's gasping and shaking.

A groan tears free of Bucky's throat and he surges up to kiss Steve like a man who found water after a drought. He finally tightens his grip on Steve's cock as their tongues glide against one another. They kiss, open-mouthed, wet and needy, while they strip each other with ever shorter, more urgent moves. Eventually, Bucky skims his lips over Steve's cheek and toward his ear, panting as he goes. He sucks Steve's earlobe into his mouth, runs his tongue around it, once, twice. His breath is loud and hot against Steve's ear. Steve's desperately concentrating on keeping the rhythm of his hand up. When Bucky bites down, that short, sharp sting of pain races down to his groin. Everything narrows down; Steve's vision whites out and he comes with a shout.

Through the rushing of blood in his ears, he's dimly aware of Bucky following him with a quiet gasp. His fingers, biting into Steve's shoulder, are all that grounds him.

"It's a good thing they're all too drunk to be conscious or there'd be questions in the morning," Bucky murmurs against Steve's collarbone when his breathing has returned to normal. Bucky's voice is a low rumbling vibration that glides along Steve's skin and makes him shiver in anticipation.

"Let them ask," Steve says and pulls Bucky close to his side. He feels like he could take on the world single-handedly and he's tired of hiding his happiness. It's going to be difficult, yes, but not impossible. If Bucky agrees, they can start with – 

"Steve," Bucky says. He sounds so careful, so reasonable. 'Don't be an idiot,' that tone says. He's heard it many times before.

"What?" Steve asks and a familiar defensiveness rises in him. He's not just being sex-stupid. He means it. At least tonight, he means every word. "I don't care, Buck. I don't. I don't want to hide you." 

"Steve." Bucky turns, sits up, and frames Steve's face with both hands, leaning in close. Like this, his eyes are close, blue striated with a darker grey, and his long lashes throw fragile shadows on his cheeks. Bucky's quick movement presses him all along Steve's front and Steve's body reacts to the feeling of Bucky's warm, sweat-slick skin, the tickle of his chest hair, the intimate drag of his soft cock against Steve's belly.

"Yeah?" He hears how breathless he sounds, feels himself growing hard again, and curses and praises the serum.

"Just shut up," Bucky says and kisses him.

Whatever he wanted to say, whatever point Steve was trying to make, is lost in the skillful slide of Bucky's lips against his, in the small, teasing touches of Bucky's tongue against his. Steve pushes one hand into Bucky's hair and sets one to his waist to pull him closer, to deepen the kiss. Bucky melts against him.

"This isn't always going to work, you know?" Steve says when they part.

"No?" Bucky asks, giving Steve a few innocent bats of his eyelashes. "Then clearly I need to work on my tactics."

Steve smirks. "Good thing I already have one that's tried and true." With that, he starts to tickle Bucky and Bucky damn near squeals. He's always been ticklish and it is one of Steve's greatest delights, the one thing that worked even when he was ninety pounds and smaller than Bucky. They roll around in the bed, Steve chasing Bucky with his fingertips dancing along Bucky's ribs and sides, tickling until Bucky gives up, laughing and holding up his hands in surrender.

Steve laughs and rolls them around so he's lying on top of Bucky. 

"You're too heavy," Bucky protests, but Steve kisses him quiet. Steve revels in the feeling of their chests rising and falling in synch. Gently, he reaches for Bucky's hands, slots his finger between Bucky's, and guides them over Bucky's head. Bucky's eyes go wide and his breath turns shallow. He opens his legs, rocks his hips up, and Steve's hard-on slides between Bucky's thighs to his butt. Steve freezes, much like he did back in the lake.

Just like it was back then, a moan rips free of Bucky's throat, but louder this time: so guttural that it makes Steve's mouth go dry.

His hands tremble around Bucky's, but he has to know, has to see –

Steve keeps watching Bucky's face while he rolls his hips. His dicks slides between Bucky's cheeks and Bucky's eyes slip closed while his teeth sink into his lower lip. Blood thunders in Steve’s ears. Bucky's dick goes from half-hard to full mast, his nostrils flare, his eyes move under closed lids, and, God, but Bucky's beautiful. Steve can't imagine ever wanting anyone more.

"Buck?" Steve asks, and his voice sounds small and breathless. He wants to, oh, God, he wants to, but he doesn't want to presume, yet at the same time he doesn't know how to ask. 

Bucky opens his eyes. "Yeah," he says. He gives a tantalizing slow roll of his hips and his eyes roll back in his head when Steve's cock nudges between his butt cheeks. "Yes." He writhes against Steve's hands holding him, bares his throat. "Please, Steve," he murmurs. "Please."

Steve's hands shake and he distracts himself by kissing Bucky. For the longest time, he does nothing but kiss Bucky until they're both breathless and rocking against one another. He doesn't feel the cold of the room any longer, his entire being is focused on Bucky and the scent of sweat and warm skin and come, the sounds of their breathing and their groans.

His hand drifts to Bucky's ass eventually, cupping one of his gorgeous cheeks and massaging it until Bucky squirms against him. Steve probes his finger against Bucky's hole and Bucky tenses. He silently vows to take his time with Bucky and use that olive oil generously.

He slides down Bucky's body and underneath the duvet into claustrophobic warmth, kissing, stroking, touching every inch of skin. Above him, Bucky fumbles for something next to the bed and then he presses the bottle of oil into Steve's hand.

Steve pushes back the duvet to breathe fresh air, then he pours a drizzle of the oil into his palm and slicks his fingers. He doesn't do more than stroke his fingers between Bucky's cheeks for long minutes, circling the tight ring of muscle. _Slow,_ Caroline had said, petting his hair. _Go slow. Distract me._

So Steve does. Just like he'd brought her off with his mouth back them, he kisses his way up and down Bucky's dick, then circles his tongue around before taking Bucky into his mouth. Bucky lets him for the first time and Steve's so turned on by the sounds Bucky makes that he almost forgets what he's trying to achieve.

When he has Bucky on the brink, he carefully pushes his oil-slick index finger inside. Bucky freezes again and Steve stops immediately. He lets Bucky's dick slip from his mouth, looks up and asks, "Okay?"

Bucky, a fine sheen of sweat on his upper lip and his pupils completely blown, nods. "Keep," he pants and lets his head drop back on the pillow, his throat bared, pushes back against Steve's finger, "keep going."

Steve slows down, though, doesn't do what Bucky asks him. He just keeps moving his index finger slowly while taking Bucky back into his mouth, the taste of salty pre-come and warm skin filling his senses.

Bucky groans and Steve sucks harder, wanting, needing to draw more of these sounds from Bucky. He keeps him teetering on the edge for what feels like half an hour, removing his finger and pushing it back in until Bucky's body no longer tenses with each intrusion. When Bucky's shaking and only a hair's breadth away from coming, Steve adds a second finger. Bucky stops breathing, stops moving, and his cock goes a little soft on Steve's tongue. Steve runs his tongue long and flat along the underside of Bucky's cock, then hollows his cheeks and presses the tip against Bucky's slit. Bucky gasps and jerks forward into Steve's mouth, pubic hair tickling Steve's chin, then back against Steve's hand as he tries not to choke Steve. Steve's fingers slide deeper inside Bucky. Bucky's muscles clamp down hard on him and it feels like Steve's finger are going to break at first, but slowly, slowly, Bucky relaxes.

They stay like that, frozen, and it would be ridiculous if it wasn't the hottest thing Steve has ever experienced. Eventually Steve twitches his index finger experimentally and Bucky's jumps as though electrocuted, his breathing noises half an octave higher and even faster now.

Steve lets Bucky's cock slip from his mouth and kisses the crease between Bucky's hip and thigh. "Good?" he asks and looks up at Bucky's face.

Bucky swallows hard, shakes his head, and croaks, "No."

Icy cold slides down Steve's back. "God, Buck, I'm – " he begins and pulls his fingers out of Bucky's body.

Bucky clamps a hand around Steve's wrist and stops him. "Not what I meant," Bucky says. His voice sounds wrecked. He squeezes his eyes shut again, then opens them and fixes Steve with a heavy-lidded glare. "Keep stalling any longer, I'll die."

"So you're – "

"I'm ready," Bucky acknowledges with a hint of desperation in his voice. "So damn ready."

Steve's heart slams against his ribcage. "Okay," he says. His voice sounds hoarse. He slicks his hard cock and strokes some more oil against Bucky's hole for good measure. "Come here," he says and pulls Bucky against him so they're spooning. He rubs his cock between Bucky's cheeks a few times, then pushes Bucky's hip a little bit forward. With a shuddering breath, he takes his cock in his hand and guides it against Bucky's opening, lining himself up.

"Yeah?" he asks on last time and kisses Bucky's shoulder.

"Yeah," Bucky whispers. He pulls his top leg up a little and then pushes back, slow and steady, exhaling as he does and… Steve's cock breaches Bucky's body. Steve halts, presses his forehead against Bucky's shoulder as the sensations overwhelm him. Bucky is tight. So damn tight and hot inside and Steve thinks that it's impossible that he'll be able to move another fraction of an inch, but the slower Bucky breathes, the more he relaxes and pushes back. Steve slides home, inch by torturous inch, until finally, his stomach touches Bucky's back and he's fully seated.

"Oh, God," Steve breathes and pulls Bucky against his chest, feeling connected everywhere, intimate and wonderful. He seals his hand over Bucky's thundering heart. "I, Bucky, I…" _I love you_ , he wants to say, _this is everything, I never want to let you go again_. He can't though; he can only pant through the animalistic urge to thrust, to claim Bucky as his in the most primal way possible.

Bucky's breath stutters and his heart beats staccato against Steve's hand. Sweat slicks Bucky's and his own skin and their harsh breathing fills the room. Bucky begins to undulate after a minute, just tiny movements, but they go straight to Steve's dick and make him see stars.

"God, you feel – " Steve pushes out. "You feel – "

"Move," Bucky says. "Fuck, Steve, move."

So Steve does. He begins to rock forward slowly, caressing Bucky's chest, his arms, hips and legs, while Bucky clamps his hand on Steve's hip and anchors himself. Bucky makes a low grunt under his breath as Steve thrusts deeper. He pushes back, gives as much as he gets. The bite of Bucky's hand into Steve's hip becomes painful and he looks at Bucky to see if everything is still okay. Bucky has his eyes squeezed shut and his lower lip caught between his teeth. He's only breathing through his nostrils now, little sharp gusts that are in perfect synch to Steve's quickening thrusts.

Steve slows down, pushes up on his elbow and moves his hand so he can gently turn Bucky's face toward him and kiss his eyes, his nose, his lips. It's a nearly inhuman feat, but Steve wants to remember this, so he burns the memory of how Bucky looks into his mind. Bucky's hair is darker at the temples and his hair line, sweat glistens on his forehead and his upper lip. A rosy flush spans his cheekbones and his lips are pink and puffy from kissing. His nostrils are flaring, still drawing in those deep hard breaths every time Steve pulls back and rocks back inside. His hand, sweat and oil slick, moves down Bucky's body and gently curls around Bucky's erection.

"Steve," Bucky gasps. "Oh, Christ, Steve – " His eyes fly open, his pupils so wide that only a small ring of the cool blue iris is left. He looks almost shocked and Steve understands that; he's shaken to the core himself. He feels like a door has been pushed wide open that was only ajar until now. He slams harder into Bucky as the feelings overwhelm him.

Bucky's mouth drops open and his hand clamps around Steve's on his dick, guiding it faster, tighter, while he pushes back against Steve's thrusts. "Steve," he pants. "Steve _Steve, I – "_

Bucky's whole body tenses as he comes, gripping Steve's cock in the process so it's all Steve can do to hang on until Bucky's done. Bucky's neck muscles strain taut and his face lights with both pain and rapture. It blinds Steve and he follows Bucky with a sob, coming harder than he can remember coming before.

When he finds the strength to raise his head and look at Bucky, he sees him in boneless relaxation. Every line and muscle is relaxed, like he's floating, his mouth just parted, hazy eyes blinking open. He catches Steve watching him and his face creases into the most joyous smile Steve has ever seen. He murmurs, "Steve." The single word splits Steve's heart open. It sounds like _Steve_ is all Bucky will ever say or mean or want, like Steve is his world. Steve kisses him. He never wants to let go, never wants to stop feeling Bucky this close to him.

He eventually has to pull out of Bucky, but he refuses to move even just an inch to clean them up. He pulls Bucky close against him, skin against skin, not an inch between them from head to toe. Bucky melts against him with a low hum of pleasure.

When Bucky's breathing has mellowed out toward sleep, the candle on the nightstand flickers, ready to gutter out. Into the dark of the night, Steve whispers what he couldn't say before. 

"I love you."


	9. November 1944, Italy - Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations can be found in the endnotes

**Morning**

His bladder wakes him just after dawn. Steve untangles himself from Bucky, tucks the duvet back around him and slips into his pants and shirt quickly. The bedroom is freezing and he has no interest in letting his feet freeze too. He won't wake Bucky until he has to, since they rarely get to sleep through the night and for once Bucky didn't startle awake from a nightmare. 

Maybe Steve can sneak some breakfast into the room and they can eat and then have some slow, lazy morning sex. His dick takes an interest in the idea, but his bladder protests.

He brushes a kiss against Bucky's forehead, humming Judy Garland like a big dope. Zing went the strings of his heart. He can't help feeling good, can't wait to get back into bed and curl himself around Bucky again.

He hears Gabe's voice when he pads back into the house, nature's call answered, and feels a flare of annoyance. His plan is thwarted. Though, if he tells them Bucky's still asleep and he wants to catch some more shut-eye too, he knows no one will question his motives. They'll just have to be quiet. 

Gabe is sitting on the sofa, legs on the floor, head hanging. He raises his head and gives Steve a bleary-eyed glare when Steve walks into the kitchen. There are creases from the sofa's upholstery on his cheek. His uniform is rumpled. "Stop looking so cheerful and well-rested."

Steve bites back on a smirk. This might turn from annoying to fun. "Good morning, Private Jones," he says with the sunniest smile in his repertoire. "And how was your night?"

"Not as good as yours, obviously." 

Steve feels himself blanch, wondering if Gabe heard him and Bucky after all.

"Damn super-soldier," Gabe grouses on and Steve realizes that Gabe's too hung-over for innuendo.

"Was the cognac off?" Steve asks, smirking.

"I hate you. Go away. Why is everyone talking near my bed?"

Dernier opens one eye, mutters under his breath and pulls the blanket over his head.

Steve takes pity on Gabe and gets him a glass of water. "What are you doing up, anyway?" Steve asks, a little quieter, as he hands it to Gabe. "I expected all of you to sleep until noon."

Gabe finishes the water in one long gulp. "Would have, believe me, if tall, English and gorgeous hadn't woken me."

"Peggy?"

Gabe manages a smirk, but groans and clutches his head immediately. "Yup." He takes a slow breath and rubs his temples. "She radioed in about twenty minutes ago, said she was on her way out."

Concern flares hot in Steve. "She wasn't supposed to get in touch until noon. Is something wrong?"

"Calm down Cap," another voice says from where the radio is situated. "She's just a pistol, that Agent Carter. She got done ahead of time." In the early morning half-light, Dum-Dum is sitting by the radio. 

"Don't look so surprised. Just because I enjoy a drink doesn't mean I forget my duties."

That's right, Dum-Dum had been on radio duty, not Gabe.

"And by duty you mean flirting with Agent Carter?" Gabe asks. He looks a little more alert now.

"There's no flirting with that one, Jones," Dum-Dum laughs. It's loud enough Dernier pushes the blanket back and gives Dum-Dum the stink eye. "Not if you want your balls intact."

"Worried about Cap?" Gabe smirks.

"Worried about her kneeing me in my goolies."

Steve winces in sympathy, but at the same time feels proud of Peggy. There aren't many people Dum-Dum respects.

"She told me to tell Jimmy something," Dum-Dum adds, turning toward Steve.

"It's _Bucky_ , Dum-Dum, will you ever learn that?"

"Not as long as me calling him Jimmy will annoy either of you." Dum-Dum grins.

Steve rolls his eyes. "So what did she say?"

"She said to tell Jimmy that Cat's doing well and that she puked on Stark's chair last week."

"She's still giving him kitten reports?" Gabe asks. He shakes his head in disbelief. "That's one hell of a contradictory lady."

The kitten reports have become a regular thing between Peggy and Bucky. Whenever she's in radio contact, she gives short updates on Cat. If the Germans do overhear any of their radio transmissions, they'll run themselves ragged trying to break the 'kitten code'. He smiles. "Not contradictory. Layered." 

"In other words, she's perfect, right, Cap?"

Steve brushes a stubborn strand of hair that keeps sliding forward to the side. "She's a very fine lady."

"Aww, look at him," Gabe says to Dum-Dum in a sing-song voice. "The nervous tell comes out to play."

Steve refuses to blush.

"It's a good thing he's built the way he is or Carter would have him for breakfast."

"Guys, come on — " Steve tries but is interrupted before he can finish the sentence.

"The build alone wouldn't help him with her, though," Gabe says. "Hear she liked him before he was Cap. Must be that sunny personality."

They're in full-on teasing mode now, and Steve begins to understand how Bucky's sisters must have felt when Bucky and he ribbed them mercilessly, back home.

Dum-Dum has the bit between his teeth now. "And the earnestness."

The teasing will only get worse – and louder – if he leaves. So he stays, hoping one of the others is up and will distract Gabe and Dum-Dum. Maybe Dernier, if he stops gnashing his teeth and actually gets up.

"Mm, chivalry, too," Gabe adds.

A door creaks at the end of the corridor behind him and bare feet pad closer. He can't tell who it is yet, but salvation is coming. At least he hopes it will be salvation and not just another addition to the round of teasing. Bucky would eat this up with a spoon, so Steve hopes that Bucky, at least, is still asleep.

"Goodness of heart."

"And those killer baby blues," Gabe finishes. He looks hatefully awake now. His hangover seems forgotten.

"Yeah, those," Dum-Dum agrees with a wide smirk.

"Are you done?" Steve asks. He tries not to sound long suffering. 

Dernier tosses the blanket back with a growl. "Avez-vous enfin terminé, vous les enculés? J'étais en train de dormir là!" 1 With his hair sticking up in all directions, he sits on the edge of the bed, glaring at them for a few seconds, then he gets up and stomps toward the corridor leading to the outhouse. He mutters under his breath all the way. 

Dum-Dum looks a little dazed. Gabe grins. "He's not a morning person."

Steve hopes that the little interlude has made them forget about their teasing, but he's out of luck. Dum-Dum turns to him and crosses his arms over his chest, leaning back against the doorframe. "So, yeah, hell of a guy, our Cap. Hell of a dame like Carter would be the only one good enough for him," Dum-Dum says and gives Steve an insolent grin that says he's taking the piss. Behind Steve, the steps he heard earlier slow to a stop. "And after the war, they'll settle down in a pretty little house and raise half a dozen of pretty little kids."

Steve thinks that, no, they won't. No unless they live next door and Steve's the godfather to Peggy's children, because he can't imagine letting Bucky go again.

"If she were a guy, I'd be threatening to kill her if she breaks his heart."

"Except she'd kick your ass."

"Except I won't have to."

Much to Steve's embarrassment, Dum-Dum begins to hum something, and Gabe, grinning like a lunatic, picks up the tune and starts to sing in his best crooning voice, _"Dear, when you smiled at me, I heard a melody, It haunted me from the start, Something inside of me started a symphony: Zing! Went the strings of my heart."_

They dissolve into raucous laughter as they watch Steve going from what he knows is a pale pink to a deep tomato red in the face. Not because of the implication that Peggy might actually like him, but because he had that same Judy Garland song playing in his head when he looked at Bucky this morning. His heartstrings went _zing_ last night and this morning, in way he'll never be able to talk about. It's all so clear and easy when he's alone with Bucky. But how, if at all, will the outside world accommodate them?

The creak of a door indicates whoever was in the hall has retreated back into one of the rooms. Too hungover to take the singing this early in the morning or take part in another round of ‘tease Steve into blushing’ so early. Or they met Dernier and were too shocked by his bedhead. All valid options, though the last one is most likely. An ill-tempered Dernier with bedhead is _frightening_.

"I'm going back to bed," Steve declares.

"Just don't dry-hump Sarge now that we got that idea of Carter in your head," Gabe calls after him.

Steve hides a wince and thinks that actually, it wasn't dry-humping he had in mind. He has the sudden urge to pull Bucky as close as possible and lose himself in Bucky's skin so he doesn't have to think about anything anymore. The kind of romance they’re implying isn’t for him anymore. He doesn't know is if he ever really wanted it or just thought he was supposed to want it – and he doesn't know what he actually wants now. 

Back in their room, Steve hears something crash and he can't help the smirk that spreads over his face. Bucky's always been prone to falling out of bed when he's exhausted. Looks like there might be another round of 'kiss it better' in his immediate future.

***

Steve's smile slips when he enters the bedroom and feels the icy wind like stinging needles against his cheeks. The window is open and biting cold air floods the room, taking what meager warmth they had accumulated during the night away. The bed linens are lying in a messy heap on the floor. The oil bottle is in shards on the floor, the oil staining the floorboards dark and seeping into the linens.

"What —" Steve begins, then sees that Bucky's clothes are no longer on the chair next to the bed. He looks at the bed and sees Bucky in it, wrapped in just the red inlet of the duvet, curled in on himself. He's lying on his side and just staring at the wall.

"Did you get the urge to try something new?" Steve asks. "Or did you develop toxic gas overnight?" His cheerful tone is forced, because something feels just _off_.

Bucky doesn't reply. His face is strangely blank, as if he doesn't even register Steve's in the room.

There are ice flowers on the windowpane. Steve closes it. It's cold enough the delicate lines of frost persist with the window closed. "Buck?" He tries again, softer this time, and takes a step toward the bed.

"Go away," Bucky rasps and buries himself deeper into the duvet.

Steve feels his frown of concern deepen. "What's wrong?"

Bucky just continues to stare at the wall behind Steve's head.

"Okay, dummy, scoot over, it's too cold to sit on the floor thanks to your sudden interest in fresh air." When Bucky doesn't move, Steve takes a deep breath and brings out the big guns, because there's one thing that always works with Bucky and he's not beyond using it to get Bucky to snap out of whatever funk he's in or win whatever strange game he's playing. "I'll catch pneumonia out here."

Nothing.

Steve stares at Bucky as an unpleasant ball of feelings begins to squirm in his chest. He knows it was a cheap shot, and he didn't mean it seriously, but never, not once in his life has Bucky failed to respond to worry about Steve's health. Not even after the serum. Even when he knew that Steve couldn't get sick anymore, that never stopped him for showing concern. 

Guess he's been the new Steve long enough that Bucky no longer worries. That rattles him even more than the moment by the airfield months ago did. He thought they'd rebuilt what the war broke. Is the intimate closeness of their bodies only deepening the rift in mind?

There's a howl that's climbing up his throat. Tension knots up his shoulders. No. He's not going to accept this. They were too close last night for it all to have changed. He saw the love he felt reflected in Bucky's eyes, in Bucky's lips parted on a wordless prayer, in the look of absolute pleasure on his face as Steve moved in him.

Just the memory makes Steve's dick twitch. Maybe Bucky is just playing a game with him? Maybe all he needs to do is tickle him or pull him close and push his cold feet against Bucky's calves, his dick against Bucky's ass and Bucky will curse a blue streak before he pushes back against Steve's dick with a sigh and they'll be all right again.

He walks around the bed, lifts the duvet and slips in, before reaching for Bucky. Bucky flinches away before Steve can do more than brush his arm. He rolls to the edge of the bed as if Steve has a contagious disease. 

The gap between them feels wider than the Atlantic. 

"What the hell is going on, Buck?"

No answer.

"Bucky," he tries again, louder this time. "What's wrong with you?"

"Just leave me alone."

Steve pushes up to his elbow. Cold air hits his skin where the duvet now gapes open. "What the hell did I do?" He huffs out a breath then runs a hand through his hair. "If I did something wrong just tell me so I can fix it."

Bucky mumbles something into the duvet that Steve can't pick up.

"What's that?"

Bucky just shakes his head and buries himself deeper into the duvet. He doesn't speak again.

Steve gets angry easy, always has, and it flares now. He doesn't know how to stop himself. "God damn it, Barnes." He's out of his depth, suddenly so damn scared that Bucky will shut him out, and anger is easier than the alternative. "You have never not talked to me. Why are you starting now?"

When Bucky still doesn't answer, doesn't move, an idea forms in Steve's mind, a mixture of soldiers' talk, Catholic doctrine and the naked fear of finding himself alone. "Did you suddenly decide the queer thing isn't for you?" The idea twists inside Steve, ugly, dirty. He wasn't queer before Bucky. Now Bucky's throwing that back in his face? "You're the one who made the first move."

The sentence hangs in the air like a poisonous fume. It's so enormous that Steve feels like it should echo, but all he hears is wind driving snow against the window and a door creaking down the hall. There are no other sounds. Bucky has stopped breathing. Steve doesn't know how to, either.

When he can't take it any longer, he gets out of the bed and dresses with jerky movements.

"I'm going to get breakfast. Feel free to join me once you've snapped out of your funk."

He looks at the bed linens on the floor, the spilled oil. "And clean up your damn mess."

He slams the door behind him.

***

Gabe is on the couch, snoring again, when Steve pads into the kitchen. He means to build the fire in the stove back up so he can make coffee. Dum-Dum and Dernier are nowhere to be seen, so he gives into the urge to clean the stove of yesterday's ash a little more vigorously than the task calls for. Plumes of soot and ash billow up as a result and Steve has to fight a coughing fit.

Monty's sleep-rough voice sounds behind him. "What's got your knickers in a twist?" 

Steve starts, twists around and up, and hits his head on the open cabinet door above him. Quick pain shoots through him, and, cursing under his breath, he rubs his hand against the painful lump forming at the top of his head. It will be gone in an hour.

Monty is hangover-creased, his hair an uncombed riot, and he leans against the doorframe for support, but he manages to look alert despite his face not yet cooperating.

"Nothing."

"Doesn’t look like nothing."

Steve crouches back in front of the stove and shoves some wood inside before reaching for the matches. The stench of sulfur when the first match sparks hangs in the kitchen like a malevolent ghost.

He feels Monty's gaze on him the entire time he busies himself with getting the fire burning. Dry heat presses against his face when the flames begin to lick at the wood.

When he can't take the expectant silence anymore, he shuts the stove's door, breathes out, rests his hands on his thighs and pushes up – carefully avoiding the cabinet door this time.

"Bucky's…" he trails off, not knowing how to go on without giving himself and Bucky away. "He's acting real strange."

"The man has a hangover, Steve." Monty smiles at him, kind and knowing, like the bigger brother Steve never had. "I know you never get those, but let me tell you, if he got you bent out of shape because he was in a bad mood this morning, just remember that his head's probably killing him. No one is in a good mood when their head feels like someone kicked it in." He winces and rubs his temple. "Believe me." He looks at the kettle on the stove. "Just swallow your pride and bring him some coffee."

"You weren't there," Steve begins, but Monty cuts him off with a laugh.

"What was it I just said about swallowing your pride?"

***

It takes him a couple of tries before he manages to do as Monty suggested. Maybe he really is just misreading Bucky? Jumping to conclusions is something he's always done and so is getting defensive when he feels rejected. The longer he thinks about it, the more Steve feels ashamed for what he said to Bucky and, that, more than anything, cements the decision to bring a peace offering.

The coffee is thin, but the scent of the real thing is heavenly after weeks and weeks of just getting the roasted wheat and chicory _ersatz_ coffee. Maybe getting real coffee will put Bucky in a better mood. It hasn't helped Dernier's bad mood; he's still glaring at Steve as if Steve was still talking loudly next to his bed, but maybe Bucky will appreciate it more.

He elbows the door handle down and pushes the door open with his shoulder, balancing both earthenware cups with the precious liquid so nothing will spill. The cold that hits him from inside the room is like a slap in the face. Again? "Christ," he says as his fingers cramp around the cups. The steam from their contents smokes off the coffee's surface.

He is about to make a quip about too much of a good thing when it comes to fresh air, but the words die before he can form them. Steve sees, but he has a hard time believing his eyes, and it freezes him worse than the blast of arctic air from the window does. 

Bucky sits on the floor in front of the open window with his eyes closed. A harsh wind drives snow inside, it dusts the floor around Bucky and has settled on his hair, his shoulders, and even his legs. How long has Bucky been sitting there for the snow to stick to him like that? Crystalline flakes even rest, trembling and fragile, on his lashes. He looks frozen, like the girl with the matches in Andersen's fairy tale, the one who froze on the ground.

This isn't right, this isn't just Bucky in a bad mood or trying to be a deliberate shit, this is something else. Something Steve has no idea how to handle. The cup in his left hand trembles and tips; it sloshes hot coffee over his skin. He curses and rights both cups.

"Christ almighty, Bucky," Steve says, because he has to say something if he doesn't want to start cursing. He rushes to close the window. "Are you trying to kill yourself?"

The old floorboards creak under his weight as he turns toward the bed to get the duvet to put around Bucky – and stops in his tracks. 

The bed is perfectly made. No trace of the earlier disarray can be seen, in fact, the bed linens would pass military inspection, with perfectly creased corners and smooth sheets that you could bounce a penny off. The heap of linens on the floor is gone, as is the broken bottle. The entire room looks clean and tidy, as if they never set foot in it.

 _'Clean up your mess.'_ Steve hears his own words echo in his mind and feels so nauseous he sways.

He shakes his head against it and crosses the room in two large steps to get at the wooden chest with the linens. Setting the cups on the floor is the only thing he slows down and does carefully. The chest opens with a sharp groan and the heavy lid thuds against the wall. It holds three brown blankets, to his relief, under the heavy, bleached linen, all of it smelling of old wool, starch and faded lavender. 

He takes all three to Bucky, leans forward to brush the snow off Bucky's hair and shoulders at least before draping the first blanket around his shoulders. Bucky remains stiff and unresponsive, and his eyes stay closed. His breath gusts like smoke in the icy room; it's the only indication that Bucky's even alive. Steve throat closes up; he takes the other two blankets and drapes them around Bucky, one over the other.

When he's done, he rushes back toward the linen chest and picks up one of the cups. It's barely warmer than Steve's hand anymore, but it's better than nothing.

"Here," Steve says. He kneels next to Bucky and pushes the cup at him. "I brought you something, dummy." His voice trembles along with his hands. 

Bucky still doesn't open his eyes, doesn't take the cup. The snow on his face has melted and hangs in large drops from his lashes, glistening like tears.

"It's coffee," Steve tries again, a note of desperate pleading creeping into his voice. "The real deal."

Nothing.

"If you don't want to drink it, use it to warm up at least," Steve pleads. He reaches out to take Bucky's hand and wrap it around the cup – 

Bucky's eyes fly open and he flinches back from Steve's touch as though Steve had threatened physical violence. In the indirect but bright light, his pupils have shrunk to pinpoints. Steve freezes, then pulls his hand away.

"God, Buck," he whispers, when the enormity of his realization demands words. Because it is clear to him now – he must have hurt Bucky last night. Must have somehow done something that Bucky didn't want, or hurt him when they… when he… 

The cup slips from his fingers and falls to the floor next to him. His stomach rolls and the room begins to spin, slow. He swallows again and again as saliva pools under his tongue until he gags, tasting coffee-tainted bile. Sweat breaks out all over. He stumbles, falls back on his ass, and cuts his hand on the shard of the cup as he reaches out to steady himself. He scrambles farther away from Bucky on his hands and heels and ass, a graceless, backwards crabwalk, leaving smears of blood on the floor, until his back hits the wall.

The mere idea that he may have forced himself on Bucky… when he felt such blinding pleasure… Steve presses a hand to his mouth to stop himself from emptying his stomach on the floor. He wants to flee, wants to reach out to Bucky again, wants to destroy something. He wants to punch the wall because he knows Bucky will never punch him. _'I didn't mean to, Bucky, I didn't mean to.'_ The words run through his head, repeat over and over, until he's not sure if he's saying them in his head or out loud.

Bucky snaps his head up and, suddenly, he's present in the room again, not a shell of a man. His eyes are dark enough a shiver runs down Steve's spine and Steve has to ask, has to know. "Did I…" he trails off, unable to form the words at the first try. "Please tell me if I did something wrong." He takes a deep breath and soldiers on, because he owes Bucky at least this. "Something you didn't want. Tell me if I hurt you last night."

Bucky has never, not once in his life, looked at him with such hopelessness. "Last night…" He, too, trails off and Steve's stomach heaves, because this is confirmation, this is everything he feared.

"It's mine," Bucky continues, and that is not at all what Steve thought would come next. The maelstrom of confusion, relief and concern Bucky's words kick start makes it hard to concentrate on what Bucky says next. "Don't take it from me." His voice holds a note of pleading. "You get everything else." He closes his eyes and adds in a barely audible whisper, "Everything you want." 

I've _got_ everything I want, Steve wants to shout, to shake Bucky out of his misery, to say that what is important is what _Bucky_ wants, damn it. The words freeze in his throat when he looks at Bucky's closed eyes, the drops of melted snow still clinging to his lashes.

Bucky opens his eyes again but doesn't look at Steve. He gathers the blankets around him, gets up and moves to the other side of the room – not on the bed – and sits down with his back against the wall, opposite Steve. Bucky rests his forehead on his drawn up knees and the wall he projects around him might as well be the Great Wall of China. 

Steve's hands begin to shake. "I'd never," he whispers. Nothing has ever meant more, he adds in his head. He can't say it; the words wither and die in his throat before he can form them.

His original relief upon hearing he didn't hurt Bucky feels wrong, tainted. It kills him that he can't be sure anymore when he could always, always tell what Bucky was thinking before the war. He didn't hurt Bucky physically, but something's still wrong. Bucky has closed himself off and won't let Steve see what it is or help.

Half an hour passes and Bucky stays still and silent. Steve slinks out of the room; cramped, cold, the dried blood from his cut itching on his skin, but that skin already knit into a whole again.

Bucky and him, though, he thinks they're in pieces.

***

Gabe and Dernier are snoring, asleep again, but the stove has been fed, and is pumping out heat, proving that either Monty or Dum-Dum haven't been idle. He doubts that Jim is awake; Jim sleeps late whenever he has the chance.

The scent of freshly brewed coffee hangs in the air, reminding Steve of the broken cup on the bedroom floor, and how cold Bucky's hands were. Bucky's words swirl in his mind, but he can't make heads or tails of them. They'd been so happy last night. Steve's sure that he didn't imagine that. Bucky denied that Steve hurt him; he'd claimed last night as his. So what on earth had happened in between going to sleep and coming back from his quick talk with Gabe and Dum-Dum that made Bucky shut down, shut Steve out? Why is he refusing to speak, shying away… ? What happened?

Why?

"Coffee wasn't a good idea after all?" Monty asks and shakes Steve from his spiraling thoughts.

"What's up, Cap?" Dum-Dum chimes in.

Steve cringes inwardly. He hadn't meant to attract so much attention. Not when he can't answer any questions without giving Bucky and himself away. At the same time, he wants to shout the truth about them, wants to tell everyone what they are to each other. He thinks of Bucky with the ice in his hair and the words stick in his throat.

"Steve?" Monty's voice is gentle but insistent.

Steve heaves an explosive sigh. "I – "

"Come on, talk to Mom," Dum-Dum says with a wink.

Steve rolls his eyes at him and flips him off. "My mother was much prettier than you." He hasn't thought of his mom in a while. Maybe she could have made sense of Bucky. Even if he never would have told her everything, she still would have been able to shine a different light on Bucky's reactions. She'd been understanding in a way Steve's never been. Suddenly, fiercely, he misses her.

The teasing distracts him from the added ache in his heart. 

"She didn't have this, though." Dum-Dum twirls the end of his moustache into peaks.

"I should hope not," Monty adds. The corner of his mouth twitches up.

"Now, come on, Steve. What's got you so mopey?"

No way out but through. Steve says, "Something's wrong with Bucky."

Something in Dum-Dum's smile changes; his eyes turn sharp. Dum-Dum, despite all the teasing remarks, is more protective of Bucky than any of the other Commandos.

"He's not talking to me."

"Never been that much of a chatter box," Monty says with a shrug. A spike of anger rams through Steve at Monty's easy dismissal of Bucky. Monty of all people doesn't get to be blasé bout _Bucky_ , god damn him.

"Have you _met_ Bucky?" Dum-Dum asks. Bucky could talk an elephant's ears off when he wanted to.

"Dugan – "

"Because I have," Dum-Dum says. "At Azzano."

Steve snaps his mouth shut, reminded _again_ that this Bucky isn't _his_ Bucky any longer. Dum-Dum doesn't say, but it's heavy in the air: Steve wasn't there – Dum-Dum and the others were – and Steve _doesn't_ know. Monty looks chastened as well.

"Is he eating?" Dum-Dum asks.

Steve shakes his head. "Didn't try. He refused the coffee."

Dum-Dum whistles between his teeth. "What did you do with that boy that he's not even drinking real coffee?" 

Steve is grateful that he's facing away from them so they don't see his wince.

"Maybe that bed made him lose his appetite," Monty suggests with a smirk.

"He was fine when we went to sleep last night," Steve says. It sounds lame enough he wants to cringe, even if it's the truth. Neither Monty nor Dum-Dum need to know that Steve fell asleep holding a naked Bucky close to him, his hand over Bucky's heart, spooned around him.

Dum-Dum fills a plate with slices of yesterday's roast boar and dumps some of the cold potatoes on there, too, a liberal heap. Steve's still amazed at the supplies they found in the house. "Let a real soldier handle this, Super Soldier," he says and tips his hat with his left hand.

"Oh, Jimmy-boy!" he sing-songs at the top of his lungs when he walks down the corridor. "Room service."

On the couch closest to the fire, Dernier startles awake, then drops back against the couch cushion. "Mon Dieu, _pourquoi_?"  2

Steve hears Dum-Dum talking to Bucky once he opens the door; Dum-Dum is loud and jovial and teasing, but the words ebb away and then there's silence, a heavy, unpleasant silence that makes Steve's skin crawl. Monty bites his lip and busies himself with making more coffee. Dernier picks at a thread on his blanket. Steve forgets the house around him, too focused on not missing any potential sound coming from the bedroom.

Dum-Dum doesn't come out again for the better part of an hour. When he does, he's pale. He has his hat in his hand. Steve's stomach sinks.

Monty catches Dum-Dum's look and raises an eloquent eyebrow at him. Dum-Dum shakes his head in response. Dernier, sitting up, nursing a cup of coffee by now, heaves a quiet sigh.

"What – " Steve begins, concern flaring hot inside of him, but Dum-Dum interrupts him.

"Just leave him be for a while. He'll snap out of it. They always do."

"They?"

"The shell-shocked," Monty explains, quiet.

The words rattle around in Steve's head. "Bucky's not – "

Dum-Dum fixes him with a glare that's somewhere between hard and pitying. "What do you think happened in that work camp, Cap?"

Hot shame climbs up in Steve's cheeks. He's never allowed himself to think about it much. He pushed the thought away because he was too glad to have Bucky back. If Bucky didn't want to talk about what happened, then Steve accepted that, because it made him uncomfortable. Should he have asked, after all? Should he have made him talk? 

"But why would he… ?" Steve runs a hand through his hair. "It's been months. We're all safe here. He was happy last night." 

From the corner of his eyes, he sees Dernier's gaze snap to him. Steve doesn't return it, too lost in his thoughts. Bucky and he were happy _together_ last night, he wants to say, but can't. Bucky laughed and he looked at Steve with more love in his eyes than Steve knew how to take. Is Bucky's withdrawal not about the sex, but about what Bucky went through in Zola's lab? Why would it get to him now, almost a year later?

Despite Bucky's earlier words, Steve needs to know, needs to ask, "Do you think that something I did… ?"

Monty's mouth hardens briefly, then he shakes his head. "You could have just asked him for the time of day and sometimes that's enough."

"Downtime's the worst," Dum-Dum says. He's looking into the fireplace, his gaze far away. His mustache droops and his jovial masks slips for once. For the first time, Steve realizes it _is_ , in fact, a mask. "You figure out, no place is really safe."

"Too much time to think," Monty agrees. "Sometimes, when everything isn't pushing you forward, you just can't deal. Let him sleep. It's all you can do for him. He'll be back on his feet when we have to pull out." 

Monty speaks with the confidence of experience and Steve feels like an impostor.These men have seen more horrors than he ever will, probably more than he could take, and yet they're following him, day after day. Bucky, who they're all so fiercely protective of, had it even worse under Zola's hand, but he still stays by Steve's side. None of them ever waver when they're under fire. It amazes him.

Monty and Dum-Dum are right. It's in quiet in between times, after the adrenaline ebbs away, that the fissures in Bucky's amour show through. He should kick himself for not seeing that pattern sooner.

"You know, normally, we just get a guy drunk when he's having a bunch of black days," Dum-Dum says, "but Jimmy's about as bad as you are, you can pour half a bar down his gullet and he's still sober at the end of the night."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying leave him be. Give him time. He'll come around."

"But I –"

"You can't out-stubborn everything, Steve."

Without warning, Dernier gets up in one fluid motion, surprising Steve. He motions toward the bedroom. "Si tu n'arrête pas de parler, je amenerais ma gueule de bois à sergent. Au moins lui, il est _calme_ ," 3 he says. He takes another cup of coffee with him.

Dum-Dum gives a slow blink. "Really not a morning person, is he?"

***

Steve rests his head against the hallway wall where he's dragged his chair to get away from the chatter in the kitchen. It's quiet in the bedroom. For half an hour, nothing happens and there are no sounds except for the occasional clink of ceramic against wood and the susurrus of hands being rubbed over fabric. It's cold as balls in the bedroom, no wonder Dernier is freezing.

Dernier comes shuffling out once, grabs the cards from the table and goes back into the master bedroom without saying a word or looking at Steve.

He leaves the door open, probably to let at least some warm air into the bedroom. Back in the room, Steve hears an aborted swish-snapping sound - cards being drawn and placed next to one another. Dernier must being playing patience. 

In the kitchen, Jim fiddles with the stove – a glance over shows Steve that Jim has his medical kit out and is boiling water, probably to try and sterilize the instruments as good as he can.

"Making syringe soup again?" Dum-Dum calls over from where he's sitting in front of the fire. "I thought we'd get something nicer for lunch."

"I can always cut out the next bullet with a dirty scalpel," Jim fires back, testy.

Dum-Dum holds his hands up. "Touchy," he comments to Gabe.

Gabe rubs his temple and raises the sheets of paper in his hand higher. "Shut it, Dugan, I'm trying to read."

"You've read that letter five hundred times already," Dum-Dum says. "It's a wonder it hasn't fallen apart yet."

It really is. Steve has seen Gabe open and re-fold the two pages covered in a small, uneven handwriting time and time again. He always smiles after, wistful, and even though he's open about everything else, he hasn't yet revealed who it's from.

Back in the master bedroom, the floorboards creak. Steve's breathing picks up. 

"Still not going to tell us who it's from?" Monty asks. He's been quiet for the longest time, Steve thought he'd fallen back asleep.

"Non," Gabe answers.

"He spends too much time with Frenchie," Dum-Dum complains.

In the bedroom, Dernier is talking to Bucky, low and under his breath and Steve can't hear enough over the sounds of the discussion around him. He sits in the chair closest to the hallway and tries to ignore everything going on around him in order to fully focus on the sounds coming from the master bedroom.

"C'est bien, tu sais?" 4

"Dugan," Gabe's voice rises and drowns out the rest of Dernier's words. "if you touch that letter, I'll kill you and I'm not joking."

"Oh, come on, you don't mean that," Dum-Dum wheedles.

Dernier keeps talking, but Steve can't hear him anymore, no matter how hard he tries.

"Don't," Gabe warns.

"Jones, really," Monty chimes in, "we're all mates here – "

Steve gets up from his chair with a jerky movement that has the chair skidding over the floorboards. "Will you shut the hell up and leave his letter alone?" he growls over his shoulder.

A shocked hush falls over the living room, leaving only the sound of snow hissing against the main room's windows, the crackling of wood in the fireplace and the clink-bubble sound of Jim's scalpels in the boiling water in its wake. In the following silence, Steve hears Dernier's quiet French from the bedroom, "Personne ne s'en préoccupe. Il ne faut pas se dévouer pour ça." 5

Much to Steve's surprise, Bucky makes a sound – the first in hours. It's muted, sounds like a choked, bitter laugh, but it's a sound. He has no idea what Dernier said, but he memorises the sound of the words in order to ask Gabe later. He might not speak the language, but his memory is eidetic. He can replicate the sound.

"Après la guerre, tu pourras venir avec moi et vivre à Paris. C'est une ville belle et civilisée." 6

Bucky sighs, long and slow. "Il n'y a pas d'après guerre pour moi." 7

Steve hears the words spoken in Bucky's voice but doesn't understand them and it takes him a while to realize that Bucky answered Dernier in French. Steve didn't even know Bucky spoke that much French. Not any more than please and thank you and the occasional swearword, at least.

"Tu les entends. C´est lui qui devrait être avec elle. Élèver les enfants. Être heureux. Il n'y a  
pas de place pour quelqu'un comme moi dans tout ça ." 8

It sounds as if Dernier moves, then Steve hears his voice again, urgent this time. "Ce n'est pas faux." 9 Steve imagines him raking his hands through his hair as he so often does when he's exasperated. "Ne te jete pas. Pas pour lui ni pour personne." 10

"Qu'est ce qu'il reste de moi, Dernier?" 11 Bucky asks. "Qu'est ce qu'il reste à jeter?" 12

"I'm making lunch," Gabe announces, loud. Steve looks over to him and sees Gabe's shoulders hunched. Gabe looks as if he's going to be sick and Steve wonders if Gabe understood what he didn't. It's unlikely, though. Bucky's voice is low enough even he, who is much closer to the bedroom than Gabe, has trouble hearing it right.

"More leftovers?" Dum-Dum asks, his voice subdued.

"You don't get to complain, you didn't cook," Gabe snaps.

"Wasn't complaining," Dum-Dum answers. He sounds hurt.

"I'll help," Monty offers.

Dum-Dum begins to take apart one of his guns, slow and meticulous. No one speaks.

It's quiet in the bedroom as well.

***

Gabe brings two plates of food into the bedroom half an hour later. The scent of meat and the heavy brown gravy wafts past him. Steve's mouth waters. He hears Dernier talk low and urgent to Bucky again, this time too quiet for even Steve to understand. Gabe chimes in with a few words, but he doesn't linger.

Steve's stomach makes an unhappy gurgling sound when Gabe comes back and Gabe gives him a pointed look. "People who didn't help shouldn't get any food, but I know how you get when we don't feed you, so come on." He rests a hand on Steve's shoulder and juts his chin in the direction of the bedroom. His look is sympathetic, bordering on pity. "Nothing you can do back there."

They eat their lunch in the same strained quiet that's present ever since he snarled at his teammates earlier and by the time he's cleared his plate, Steve can't take it anymore. "Listen, guys, I'm sorry." He pushes his plate away from him, making the cutlery tinkle against the earthenware plate. "I'm just worried sick."

"Let's play cards," Dum-Dum says instead of an answer. "Not much else to do while we sit around and wait for Carter." He looks toward the window. "If she makes it through the snow drifts."

"If anyone can do it, she will," Monty says.

Gabe nods toward the bedroom. "Frenchie took the cards."

A moment of tense silence follows, then Dum-Dum shrugs. "I can play anywhere." He scrapes his chair back, gives his Bowler an adjusting touch and ambles toward the bedroom.

Monty looks after him, then at Jim who is just finishing his potatoes. Their understanding is quiet as usual. Jim stuffs the last potato in his mouth, chews and nods. They both get up and follow Dum-Dum.

That leaves just Gabe and Steve and Steve … has no idea how to go back in that room where he's so clearly not welcome. 

Gabe looks at him and shakes his head. "You do the dishes," he says, matter of fact. "Then bring some coal in the bedpan. It's too damn cold back there."

He's not sure why, but the tension in his shoulders eases a little as he watches Gabe walk down the hallway.

***

"Call." Bucky. That's _Bucky's_ voice. Steve stops outside the bedroom door and nearly drops the bedwarmers he's holding. Bucky's talking again.

"I raise a cigarette," Dum-Dum says. The sound of him scratching his beard is loud even outside the bedroom.

Monty's voice holds a smirk when he says, "I call the fag and raise half a bar of chocolate."

"Ooooooh," Dernier coos, " _bien_ hand?"

"I fold," Gabe says. "I'm not giving up any more of my chocolate."

"Awwww, too chicken," Morita mocks.

"Too attached to my one bar of chocolate. You already cleaned me out last time, Morita. You'll get fat at this rate."

"Hey, room service," Dum-Dum hollers over the chuckles and the fond insults that follow Gabe's words, "where is that bed warmer? We're freezing our balls off here."

The familiar sounds of his team playing poker makes it easier to walk into the bedroom. 

"Didn't know you had them left after the last meeting with Carter," Monty says as Steve walks through the door.

Raucous laughter follows Monty's jab.

Steve sets the two bed warmers down in the middle of the half-circle his team has formed around Bucky, who is still sitting with his back to the wall, but with a bit of a distance between him and its freezing cold. Dum-Dum, despite demanding the bed warmer, pushes both of them toward Bucky. The sound of metal scraping over the floorboards hangs loud in the room. It helps, though, and no one's breath smokes any longer.

His team all have blankets draped around their shoulders and are intent on the poker game. Jim has his best poker face on, immobile and enigmatic as a sphinx, Dum-Dum looks red-faced and embarrassed, Monty amused, Dernier determined and Gabe dejected. Bucky… Steve scrutinizes him carefully. He still doesn't look okay, he's pale and visibly beyond tired, but he's alert and has cards in his hand. He plays in silence, raising whatever his bet is without saying a word, but he's listening to the bickering with a hint of a smile. He looks at everyone but Steve, though, and that settles like a lead weight in his stomach.

Outside, the storm has let up, the constant sound of it howling around the corners of the building has dropped to the occasional gust that presses against the windows. The ice-flowers are still present, however, and in the waning light of the late-autumn afternoon they glisten like fine-spun silver.

"Sit down, man, you're making me nervous," Gabe says over his shoulder.

Dum-Dum nods. "We're starting a new hand, so you might as well play too. See if we can stop Morita from cleaning us out completely."

"What's the ante?"

"Next can of fruit in your rats. We'll trust you to pay up."

Steve sits down between Dum-Dum and Monty and picks up the cards he's dealt. Morita deals like he spent time in Monte Carlo, though he picked up all his tricks from Dernier. Who may have really learned there. Everyone bets, matches, Monty folds, and they make their discards and call for new cards.

Jim shuffles the cards, then deals them with a smirk. "The only one who's a real danger to you is Sarge."

The corner of Bucky's mouth twitches and hope flares in Steve. They must have chosen the right tactic in trying to get Bucky out of his head. The game seems to help Bucky, so maybe all he needs to do is play along, act as if nothing happened. It seems to work for the others, at least.

They play through another three hands like that, Dum-Dum cursing every hand he gets and betting wildly on a pair of twos once in an effort to psych out Morita that fails.

"So, hey, Buck," Steve says when he can't take Bucky's silence anymore. "I was wondering if you had any idea how to get out of the mess outside." He points toward the window.

Bucky's gaze snaps to him, sharp and wary.

Steve blushes and begins to stutter. "Just, remember that Winter in '41 when you were helping out after the blizzard." From the corner of his eye, his sees Gabe wince, and yet it feels as if he can't stop his mouth from running. "We need to rendezvous with Peggy, after all, and – "

Bucky's eyes close, his shoulders drop. When he blinks his eyes open again, he looks at his cards, pushes them together and tosses them, face down.

"Can the chitchat, Cap," Dum-Dum snaps. He looks angry. "I wanted to lose to Sarge instead of Morita for once. Now he's folded and I'm stuck paying Ming the Merciless again."

Bucky doesn't pick up the cards dealt to him after that, though; he draws the blanket tight around his shoulders and disappears inside his own head again.

Steve wants to bite off his own tongue.

Snow slides from the roof in a loud whooshing sound. Steve flinches when it hits the ground with a thump loud enough to make the house vibrate.

They switch from playing poker to playing rummy, but Dum-Dum complains that it's not fun without "Jimmy" playing along. 

The light dims. Dernier gets a candle that fills the center of the room with its warm light and throws the rest of the room into looming shadows. In the kitchen, a log falls over in the stove. In the far distance outside the house, probably in the forested area they passed the day before, Steve hears a long drawn-out howling noise. A wolf. He shivers and looks toward the bed, wishing he could reach for the duvet but not daring to move. 

Bucky's eyes are closed. He's not sleeping, though, his breathing is wrong; too fast. Maybe he's freaked out by the wolf as much as Steve is. If he heard it; no one else did, but Bucky flinched.

Eventually, Monty pulls out one of his worn Sherlock Holmes novels, sits closer to the candle and begins reading to them from it. His voice is loud and nuanced enough to drown out the eerie howling.

One by one, the other Commandos trail out. Steve hears Morita check the radio in the main room. Despite Steve's offers, Gabe refuses to let him even boil potatoes, so Gabe's busy in the kitchen fixing dinner now. Dum-Dum announces that, now that the storm has eased up a little outside, he wants to walk the perimeter before darkness falls completely again. 

"Don't get eaten by the big bad wolf," Jim says to him when Dum-Dum opens the door with a mournful creaking noise.

With Monty still reading from his novel, Dernier goes back to playing patience. Soon the sound of the cards being snapped on the floor mingles with Monty's voice. Steve concentrates on them and shuts out the world outside the bedroom.

The light grows dim and Steve watches Bucky's eyelids flutter, then close. His breathing turns regular and deep.

Monty stops reading when the candle flickers, burning low, and Bucky twitches, bleary eyes blinking open again.

"It's getting a bit nippy in here," Monty says, miming a cough. "Not good for the singing voice."

"I can take over if you want," Steve offers. "I don't mind the cold as much."

Monty checks for Bucky's reaction. Bucky shrugs, a barely perceptible twitch of his shoulders, so Monty hands over his book to Steve and indicates the place he stopped. He walks out then, but looks over his shoulder again when he's in the doorframe. He looks older, sadder. "I'll get you a new candle," Monty says.

Before Steve can start reading again, he hears Dernier talk to Bucky in low tones. He's not concentrating like mad this time, and is distracted by Monty handing him a handful of simple white candles, so he only catches, _"Au lit,"_ and then, _"Chaud."_ Steve lights one of the candles with the flickering old one and then snuffs its flame in the hot wax. It clings to his fingers, the burn there and gone again. It takes a moment for the new candle to stay upright. It's brighter than the other one was.

By the wall, Bucky nods and lets Dernier pull him up, guide him over to the bed and under the duvet. Dernier stuffs the duvet around Bucky the way Steve's mother did, smoothes the bed-linens, tucking him in. Steve's fingers itch to do the same, to make sure Bucky's all right.

 _"Lire,"_ Dernier says to Steve when he turns around. He lights the candle Steve handed him with a match that only strikes on the fourth try. It flickers in the draft when he sits it down on Steve's side of the bed on the nightstand. Dernier gestures from Steve toward the bed. _"Lire,"_ he repeats.

Steve frowns rises from where he's sitting on the floor and gives the bed where only the top of Bucky's head is visible under the thick duvet a doubtful look. "Are you sure?" he asks, turning to Dernier.

Dernier nods. _"Lire."_ He motions for Steve to sit down next to Bucky.

The old bedframe creaks and the bed mattress dips when Steve sits. Bucky stops breathing for a long minute, then he exhales slowly. Steve's heart hammers against his chest. His feet are cold. He forgot the blanket on the floor.

 _"Lire,"_ Dernier repeats, impatient, and points at the book.

Steve lifts the books toward the meagre light of the candle and begins, "'It is a most singular thing that a problem which was certainly as abstruse and unusual as any which I have faced in my long professional career should have come to me after my retirement, and be brought, as it were, to my very door. It occurred after my withdrawal to my little Sussex home, when I had given myself up entirely…13'"

Dernier shuts the door behind him with a quiet click, muffling the sounds of the others talking over the dinner prep.

Bucky continues to breathe shallowly next to him.

Steve reads until Bucky falls asleep again.

***

Steve blinks awake, unsure what woke him. The candle is snuffed, the room dark except for the pale square of the window.

Bucky’s still in the bed, though he's rolled even farther away from him in the night, and is curled into himself, with his arm covering his face. The gap between them feels like an ocean Steve's unable to cross and, God, it hurts just as much as it hurt before he fell asleep. 

At least Bucky is here, not bunking with one of the others, though Steve can't figure out why, when he still wouldn't talk to him at the end of the evening. Everyone else, Bucky muttered a few words to over the poker game. Steve expected Bucky to stay away from him after what Steve threw at him. That Bucky's here feels like he's offering a forgiveness Steve doesn't deserve.

Something's different. Something woke Steve up. Bucky's breath comes in puffs, as if he's pushing against something. Steve sits up and listens more closely. This is how Bucky sounds when he's biting back against pain. In his sleep, under his breath, muffled by the thick duvet – careful, always so damn careful not to wake anyone, not to wake _Steve_ – Bucky recites his name, rank and serial number just like he did when Steve found him in the lab.

Steve feels as if someone dropped his stomach from a plane as everything Dum-Dum and Monty said to him in the morning, before Dernier of all people decided to chat with Bucky and Bucky came around, slots into place. 

He's been blind. He's supposed to have Bucky's back the way Bucky always had and has his and Steve didn't see. He wonders how long Bucky has been hiding this.

Shame and protectiveness swirl inside of him and, unable to stop himself from reaching out, he rests his hand on Bucky's bowed head.

Upon contact, Bucky twitches once, violently, as if he's been punched. Steve's about to pull his hand back, but, surprisingly, Bucky goes still. 

He doesn't dare do more, not after Bucky's clear rejection of any contact with Steve earlier. A whimper makes Steve react on instinct, though, and he keeps his hand where it is, just gently moves his fingertips. The longer Steve maintains the contact, threads his fingers through the softness of Bucky's hair and glides his fingertips along Bucky's feverishly warm scalp, the more Bucky settles. Asleep, his breathing slows and he gravitates toward Steve.

At the first touch of Bucky's foot against Steve's calf, his hand against Steve's hip, things happen in a flurry of motions. Bucky turns, scoots close to Steve, and presses up against him, clinging so hard Steve feels the pressure of his hands dig right into his bones. It's only been a day, but the relief of feeling Bucky close again makes Steve's heart ache in his chest. He gives in to the overwhelming urge to curl himself around Bucky, pull him close, and shelter him. Bucky's body is flush against his own, so they're touching from head to toe. Even through the layers of Bucky's clothes, Steve feels his ribs, his hipbones, his knees, and the fine tremor that still runs through him, even asleep. 

No more accepting half of Bucky's ration no matter how hungry Steve is. Bucky isn't going to starve himself for Steve any longer. He's ashamed he didn't notice before.

"Stay," Bucky mumbles under his breath, sleep-slurred, the exhalation puffing warm against Steve's chest. "Don't leave."

It's too dark to see if Bucky's eyes are open, but Steve senses that Bucky is still asleep. Bucky would say that only while he's dreaming, not during the day, and that hurts too.

With his body, his warmth, all his might, he tries to shield Bucky's sleep from his nightmares and fears, tries to show him that he'll never leave him. "I'm so sorry, Buck," he murmurs the words that he's been dying to say since the afternoon into Bucky's hair. "I didn't mean what I said earlier. I didn't mean it." It's easier to say it now.

Even as Bucky's desperate grip on Steve loosens, Steve stays awake, on guard, until the first light of dawn begins to creep in the room.

***

Bucky is gone when Steve wakes up. The implication chills him despite the thick feather duvet.

His heart beats double time as he dresses and all but runs out the door – only to be met with all of his team sitting around the radio in the living room. Bucky is there, too, looking pale but otherwise no different from two days ago. He flickers a perfunctory smile at Steve but doesn't meet his eyes.

"Look who finally decided to get up," Jim comments.

"Got your beauty sleep?" Gabe joins in.

Steve has a hard time concentrating on them; his gaze is glued on Bucky, who looks so… normal. As if nothing happened. He's even shaved.

"Coffee's on the stove if you get your jaw hinged again enough to drink it," Bucky comments without looking at Steve. 

Gabe snickers.

Steve locks his jaw and forces his feet to move even though he's so confused it's a wonder he stays upright. Has he been sick the last two days, hallucinating? This return to 'normal' throws him off track. He doesn't understand anything. They all act like nothing's different with Bucky, but he was a basket case yesterday. How is that possible? Why?

Monty slaps him on the back and hands him a cup. There's enough force to it to knock Steve off his feet before the serum. It doesn't even rock him now, so he gapes at Monty, wondering what the hell?

Monty nods toward the kitchen table. Dernier is sitting next to Bucky, chattering, while Gabe provides a half-hearted translation, over a piece of det cord and a diagram penciled onto a piece of paper. Bucky clutches his coffee and concentrates on the diagram, shoulders hunched, and Steve finally gets it.

They are _making_ it normal for Bucky, letting him have that to make it easier for him.

"Breakfast is leftover dinner's leftovers," Dum-Dum declares.

"Everybody else eat?" Steve asks. He's starving but remembers his vow during the night. Bucky has to eat first.

"Yeah, we weren't stupid enough to wait for you," Jim tells him.

Steve musters a laugh and does his best to follow their lead through the rest of the day. Bucky still doesn't talk with him so much as at him and keeps someone else in the room, but it's better than the haunted shell Steve faced the day before.

He tells himself things will get better once they're back in England. It's just the stress, the exhaustion and the importance of what they've been doing. Bucky will get over it. He always does.

He has to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Footnotes and translations:
> 
> 1: Are you _all_ done, you fuckers? I was trying to sleep here! 
> 
> 2: God, _why_? 
> 
> 3: "If you won't stop talking, I'll take my hangover to Sarge. At least he's _quiet_." 
> 
> 4: "It's okay, you know?" 
> 
> 5: "No one cares. You don't have to throw yourself in the way of a bullet." 
> 
> 6: "After the war, you can come with me and live in Paris. It is beautiful and civilized there." 
> 
> 7:"There is no after the war for me." 
> 
> 8: "You heard them. He should be with her. Raise kids. Be happy. There's no place for someone like me in that."
> 
> 9: "It's not wrong." 
> 
> 10: "Don't throw yourself away. Not for him. Not for anyone." 
> 
> 11: "What is left of me, Dernier? 
> 
> 12: "What's left to throw away?" 
> 
> 13 Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur, Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Lion's Mane, November 1926, Liberty Magazine, collected in "The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes", 1927.


	10. December 1944, England

**December 1944, England**

They pulled off the latest mission by the skin of their teeth, cursing the brass and Hydra equally by the time they made it out of the Alps, but they did make it and they're back in London for Christmas. Back to actual beds. In a hotel instead of the army barracks no less, thanks to some favors called in by Phillips. The men are nearly giddy.

Everyone is tired, tired of the non-stop missions, tired of the casualties, tired of the war, and whether or not he admits it, so is Steve. A few days' break will do all of them good. Christmas, a little celebration a reminder of life at home will do them all good.

Someone put up a sad excuse for a Christmas tree to keep spirits up at headquarters. Whoever it was, Steve appreciates the effort. London's decorations reflect the peoples' exhaustion after years of war; they've become cynical, 'by Christmas' is a refrain that's been heard too often for anyone to believe the war will end soon. Steve understands, but he misses the way New York sparkled and embraced the Christmas season.

The Commandos are on light duty; nothing to do but filing reports and answering questions asked by strategists.

There's no 'official' Christmas party planned, but Master Sergeant Billson and Chief Hollybeck have been seen together with Stark; Howard looking particularly smug while he had his head together with the chief warrant officer. It's not like that's a new look on Howard's face, but Steve can tell the differences in Howard's bounce by now. This time, it says 'I know something you don't and you're going to like it'. Steve wants to believe that, at least. If Billson and Hollybeck are in on it, it has Phillips' imprimatur at least. He has hopes. A party will be good for everyone, especially Bucky.

The conference room is still all business, though, except for Cat.

Cat is perched on the map-table, keeping a close eye on Bucky, who is bent over it, correcting an inaccuracy on one of their maps. Bucky is ignoring her or pretending to at least. It's usually a game of who breaks first – Cat to come rub her head against Bucky to make him pet her or Bucky smiling, picking her up, and rubbing her belly. He and Phillips are the only people who have that privilege. Major Andrade did as well, but no one else since him. Steve tried it once and ended up with his arms scratched bloody and Bucky laughing his head off.

Under any other circumstances, their antics would make Steve smile except… things haven't been the same since the chateau. Oh, to an outsider, nothing is changed at all; he doubts that any of the Commandos suspect that something's wrong. Bucky talks to Steve, mocks and teases him the same as always, always has Steve's back, and even sleeps close to him at night again. 

What they don't see is that Bucky has shut Steve out completely. Oh, sure, Bucky talks to him, Bucky's his sergeant and takes his duties seriously, but there's a distance between them. The jokes fall flat. Their conversation is on the surface, about each op, and never goes deeper. Bucky keeps a subtle distance. He hasn't touched Steve except as part of a mission in thirty-four days. Steve's counting. No accidental brush of their shoulders, no slaps on the back, no warm hand on the back of Steve's neck when he's low. He moves away when Steve tries to reach out, gracefully, without comment, but determined, even though Steve has repeated his apology from that night at the Chateau several times. The rift between them grows wider each day and it kills Steve. The only times he manages to ease the gnawing pain inside of his chest is at night, when Bucky sleeps, and Steve dares to rest the back of his fingers against Bucky's arm, feeling the warmth seep through the fabric of his jacket.

He's so focused on Bucky that it takes him a while to notice anything else. It's only when the door opens and brings in a draft and that draft carries the scent of a gentle perfume that Steve raises his head. Peggy is standing by the door, watching him. She's radiant as always, and she smiles when she sees him look, but her eyes are sharp and linger on Bucky's bowed back a little too long for Steve's comfort.

Steve straightens to near attention and smiles at her. He's always happy to see Peggy. Bucky glances up and gives her a nod before returning his attention to the map, his shoulders a little tighter. Peggy takes their acknowledgement as her cue to walk up to them. Her heels are low enough they don't create a sound different from male officer's dress shoes. "Captain Rogers," she greets. "Sergeant Barnes."

"Agent Carter," Steve greets her.

Next to him, Bucky straightens up, but not quite to attention, and murmurs. "Ma'am."

"You aren't happy with our maps?" Peggy asks him with a half-smile and a nod toward the pencil in Bucky's hand. She's thinner than when Steve first met her. Her eyes, like Bucky's, are tainted by the shadows of what she's seen and done. Her work in Europe shows in the strain around her eyes and mouth, despite the sharp slash of her scarlet lipstick and her always impeccable poise.

"If you're going to send people into that hellhole, you want them to come out alive, don't you?" Bucky's tone is a little sharper than is warranted.

"Indeed we do," Peggy acknowledges, not taking the bait. One more thing Steve admires about her, because he's not sure he would have managed. She looks genuinely interested. "I take it you can help with that?"

Bucky looks between her and Steve, just a quick flicker of his gaze. He exhales. Something in his posture loosens and Steve watches the tension drain from his shoulders. It's not relaxation, though. It's defeat. Steve has no idea how to interpret that. "Yes, ma'am." Bucky's tone is upbeat, which clashes so hard with his body language it should give him whiplash. "Between my memory and Captain Rogers' talent for drawing maps, our people should be a lot safer."

"Excellent," Peggy says. She sounds genuine. She _is_ genuine. She understands exactly how important good maps are. "I'm very glad we have your keen eye to rely on."

"If you don't mind, ma'am, I'd like to finish making the changes while the memory's still fresh," Bucky says with a gesture toward the map. "I'm sure Captain Rogers will answer any questions you might have regarding the last mission." It's as smooth a brush-off as Steve has ever seen, pushing away both Peggy and him at the same time.

"Do continue, Sergeant," Peggy says. "As it happens, I have an urgent matter to discuss with the Captain, indeed."

"Ma'am," Bucky answers and bends over the map-table again; the very picture of studious intent. Steve wants to shake him.

"Captain," Peggy says, turning to Steve, and reminding him that she's here with a purpose, "may I have a word?"

"Sure," Steve says. He doesn't give in to the urge to lean against the map table to root himself in place next to Bucky, doesn't want to do anything that could be construed as disrespect toward her. It's not just his mother's upbringing, it's because he knows that too many of the men here _wouldn't_ bother showing Peggy that respect. "What's up?"

Peggy's gaze flickers to Bucky, then back to Steve. "Why don't we go outside to discuss this?"

Bucky keeps his head down and doesn't look up, though the sergeant manning the radio looks in their direction with raised eyebrows. Yes, Peggy is being unusually bold for a woman – and that's just one more thing Steve likes about her, even if, right now, he doesn't want to leave. Technically, he outranks her, and could refuse. Technically. He knows he'd never manage, though.

They leave Bucky to his corrections and step outside to the cool corridor of the underground facility. It smells vaguely the way he remembers the old churches in Germany and France smelling – damp stone and old age.

"We could have spoken in front of Bucky," Steve says once they've rounded the corner and are out of clear earshot of the people working on cables in the corridor. "I don't like keeping secrets from him."

"We really couldn't have," Peggy says. The caged lightbulbs lighting the corridor paint her face in harsh chiaroscuro. Her lips are pressed together, all smiles gone.

Steve frowns. "Wh – " He doesn't get any farther thanks to a harried-looking private, one of Hollybeck's enlisted men, running into them. His arms are stacked so high with cardboard boxes labeled in Spanish that he can barely look around, much less over them. Steve steadies him so he doesn't fall and take the boxes down with him.

"What are you doing here, Pegs? I told you to keep people out of the corridor." The mixture of exasperation and a slight whine comes in a voice Steve has only heard over the radio over the last couple of months. It's nice to see the man it belongs to.

"Howard."

Before Steve can finish turning around, a hand lands on his shoulder in a hard slap. "Hey, pal." Howard's smile is wide and delighted. His gaze goes between Steve and Peggy and something sly enters it. "I'm not interrupting a little tête-à-tête, am I?"

Steve is about to stutter his denial, but Peggy's eye roll – a thing of beauty – stops him. "Clearly," she says, deadpan. "We were just starting on the foreplay." She fixes Howard with an arch look. "How rude of you to interrupt."

Steve feels a blush heat his cheeks while Howard doubles over laughing. "I love her," he says, wheezing. "Don't you?"

"Show some mercy, Howard," Peggy admonishes and saves Steve from having to reply. Is it love he feels for her? Love should feel different, more like what he feels for Bucky, but what does he know? All he knows for sure is that what he feels toward Peggy is different now, different from when they first met. Different from before Howard gave him the shield. He wonders sometimes, with the way that Peggy looks at him with such warmth, if that might be a problem in the future. If he can be any good for her, feeling the way he does about Bucky. Would it be fair to her? To any of them?

Peggy's voice distracts him from his train of thought and he concentrates on the conversation around him again. 

"What are you doing here anyway?" Peggy asks Howard. "I didn't expect you back so early."

"Jarvis had a tail wind and the package was delivered early."

"Package?" Steve echoes.

Another smirk kicks up one side of Howard's mouth. "None of your concern."

"You're not going to tell him not to worry pretty head?" Peggy asks.

"I might, if I weren't sure you'd clip me around the ears for stepping in on your territory."

"You'd love that, wouldn't you?"

"You clipping me around the ears?" Howard looks speculative for a few seconds, then a smirk lifts the corners of his mouth. "As a matter of fact…" He wriggles his eyebrows.

Peggy rolls her eyes again and it's so routinely done that Steve wonders if she's not doing it out of habit around Howard more than because Howard merits it. Howard would be put out and feel ignored if Peggy didn't react. Steve definitely sympathizes. "Go get your surprise ready."

Howard lifts two fingers to his temple in a sloppy salute. "See you lovebirds later."

" _Leave_ , Howard."

Howard does, whistling a song as he trundles down the hall.

"One of these days…" Peggy says, sounding mock-exasperated.

"What is he up to?" Steve asks, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"Loose lips sink ships, Captain," Peggy says, and her smirk looks amazingly like Howard's. They have clearly spent too much time around one another.

Steve crosses his arms over his chest. "I could order you to tell me."

Peggy lifts her eyebrow slowly. How she manages to look menacing and amused at the same time is beyond him. "Is that so?"

Steve takes a breath, then deflates. "I could try?"

"And good luck with that," she answers. "Now, how about we get back to the subject at hand?"

"I don't think we got as far as you telling me what that subject was. And I still think we could have discussed it in front of Bucky. He's my second in command, he should know what I know."

"In this case, he really shouldn't. Not yet, at least. Unless you wanted to discuss the question of his fitness for duty in front of him." She paused and added, "Also, Lt. Falsworth is your second in command, Captain. That is how the military works."

Steve blinks, wondering if his ears just played a trick on him. "What?"

She rolled her eyes at him this time. "Never mind that. Have you looked at Sergeant Barnes lately?"

All the damn time, Steve thinks, and feels a wave of protectiveness rise inside of him. There wasn't a time in his life when he didn't – he grew up with Bucky, for god's sake. "Of course."

"Then you have seen the way he's changed in the last year."

"How would you know how he changed?" Steve asks, irrational anger getting the better of him. "You didn't know him before I got him out of the work camp."

"No, I didn't," Peggy agrees. "I'm not talking about the change before and after that, though. I'm talking about the last six months."

"So, what's happened in the last six months?" Steve demands while at the same time, his heart sinks, because it's been four months since the lake and the hay barn. Since he and Bucky became… more. Is that what she's getting at? Is she demanding to have Bucky sent home on a blue ticket because she's found out that Steve and he are together? It's an ugly thought, and Steve's stomach twists, while his hands clench into fists at his sides. If that's what she's getting at, he wants to hear it from her mouth. He hates the thought of losing respect for her, but by God, he's not going to let go of Bucky because Peggy disapproves. Not even for her. And if the brass think they can discharge Bucky and not Steve for the same thing, they don't know him at all.

"Steve," her tone turns mild, understanding. Steve wants to vomit. "I know you love him like a brother, but have you ever considered that you're turning a willful blind eye where he's concerned?"

Steve's thoughts screech to a halt. Like a brother. She doesn't look like she's being sarcastic. Is this not about him and Bucky being together?

"No," Steve answers, both because it's true and because he's just too surprised by this sudden twist.

She crosses her arms over her chest and Steve tries very hard not to notice how the movement accentuates the swell of her bosom. "Have you noticed he's lost a lot of weight?"

Steve barks a laugh. "We're operating behind enemy lines, Peggy. It's not like we can just walk into the next restaurant and order steaks."

Her mouth turns down in a moue of distaste. "Thank you for reminding me of what it means to fight in a war, _Captain_."

"I didn't mean…" Steve lifts a hand, then drops it again. "Peggy, come on."

"There have been complaints about him shouting at enlisted men."

This is what she's getting at? He doesn't want to alienate her further, but it really is laughable. "If they can't take a bit of shouting, they either never went to boot camp or never should have made it out."

"He drank enough to drown a horse last night. Didn't seem to faze him all that much, which makes me wonder how used he is to heavy drinking by now."

Yes, Steve had noticed that, but he's used to the Commandos drinking. "You spend time with Dum-Dum Dugan, you need to learn to hold your liquor." He wants to shut her down. Maybe a little humor will do the trick. Ordering really won't, not with Peggy, and if he isn't careful she'll take whatever he says as a challenge.

Peggy throws up her hands in a gesture of exasperation. "Steve, are you listening to me? Barnes is not all right."

"So far nothing you've told me seems overly strange. If those are the only reasons you have for wanting to discuss his fitness for duty, then…"

"Then what?" Peggy's gaze is hard and demanding, and there's a fire in it.

 _Then I wonder if it's professional jealousy_ , Steve thinks, but for once, he's smart enough to not say what's on the tip of his tongue. "Then I wonder what else you think you know, because I'm not convinced."

"Howard saw him sitting by himself, eyes wide open."

Steve suppresses an irritated shrug. "So?" Maybe Bucky was just tired. They've all slept with their eyes open at one time or the other.

"He said when he tried to talk to him, Barnes didn't even know who he was."

Now this, this, Steve is sure about. "He was playing him, Peggy. Bucky has always been a prankster."

Peggy closes her eyes and rubs her temple as if she suddenly has a headache. "You brick-headed, utter fool… " She stops herself, takes a deep breath and lifts her chin to capture his gaze. "He has refused to see a doctor since you got him out."

Steve shakes his head. "That's not true, he was in triage. I even heard Phillips talk to him about it – "

"The triage tent was full of nurses because the doctor had drunk himself into a stupor the night before." A hard line appears around Peggy's mouth. "They checked for visible wounds, no more."

"Maybe there just wasn't more," Steve says. He really doesn't like the way this conversation is going. Bucky isn't perfectly fine, none of them are, but he is fit for duty. He's proven himself time and time again, and Steve can't imagine going out in the field without him. He needs Bucky. "Bucky's strong, stronger than anyone I ever knew. He – "

"Steve, we don't know what Zola did to him."

Steve leans against the corridor wall as if it can give him the support he needs. "Sometimes a fella just doesn't want to talk about what's behind him. He's not a woman."

Peggy's expression sets into a perfect mask, only a bloom of color along her cheekbones giving away her anger, and Steve _knows_ that he's said the wrong thing. She may punch him.

"No, he's not," Peggy states in a hard voice. The smile she plasters on her face is forced. "Thank you for reminding me that you, too, believe in the proper order, _Captain_. Good luck in the field. Merry Christmas." She makes it sound like _Go to Hell_. She turns on her heel and stalks down the corridor.

"Peggy," he calls after her weakly. "Wait, Peggy, I didn't – "

She doesn't stop. Her heels clack against the concrete floor.

Steve drops his head against the corridor wall and closes his eyes. "Damn it." His mind whirls with her accusations. How is he so staggeringly inept in talking to women?

"You should have let me give you those lessons, pal," Howard's voice suddenly sounds next to him.

Steve opens his eyes and sees Howard looking in the same direction Peggy just left. For once, Howard doesn't look smug.

"Yeah, I guess I should have," Steve acknowledges.

"Well, you can woo her back with a nice Christmas present."

"I don't have any presents," Steve says, and that pains him. All he has are some of his sketches, and he doesn't think they'd make good presents. "It's not like I had the time to go shopping."

"And that's why you need a friend like me," Howard says, beaming at him.

"I'm torn between being glad and being scared."

"Don't you trust me?" Howard asks.

Steve just raises an eyebrow.

"Fair enough," Howard relents. "I did ask Jarvis to pick something out, pretending he was you. Does that help?"

Steve hasn't met Jarvis yet, but Howard seems to trust his butler to clean up after him, so he hopes it's not going to be something that will embarrass him or Peggy. "We'll see."

Though he's skeptical, he realizes that he never had the chance to give Peggy a Christmas present last year. It would be nice to have something for her. It would be nice to have something for everyone.

"He picked up stuff for your team as well," Howard says as though reading Steve's mind.

People say a lot of things about Howard Stark. Vain, self-absorbed, shallow, arrogant, just as wasteful with his money as with his attention. They miss seeing the other side of Howard, the side that's intelligent, incredibly funny and loyal and generous, and thoughtful. Steve's not going to say that he's seen all sides of the man Howard is behind the mask he wears for the public. He cherishes what he has glimpsed of him, though.

"I'll pay you back," Steve says, accepting Howard's offer.

Howard understands what he doesn't say. He smiles and waves Steve off with a throwaway gesture only a very rich man could manage. "Eh." 

"Yes, I will," Steve insists. He doesn't like being in people's debts. He already has enough people he can never pay back for all the good things they've given to him. His Ma. Bucky. Erskine. 

"You don't have to," Howard says, "but if it makes you feel better, you can. After the war."

Steve nods, seeing the offer for what it is: Howard's way of allowing Steve to settle the debt in a way that he can. "After the war." It's strange, Howard really seems to really want him to make it out alive. Steve doesn't know when they crossed the line between scientist and his experiment and friends, but he likes that they did.

"You know," Howard says after a small silence. "She's not wrong about Barnes."

Steve feels his neck muscles tense. "What do you know about Bucky?"

"He's been off lately and he really has lost more weight than any of your team."

"Not everyone has the luxury of a personal butler who cooks for them."

"Touchy, aren't we?" Howard raises an eyebrow and looks far too amused for Steve's taste.

"Only when people talk about things they don't understand."

Howard's smirk fades a little. "Carter understands."

"Agent Carter is bitter because she can't go out in the field." He hates himself for saying it, much less thinking it, but damn it, he's at the end of his rope. She's wrong and there must be a reason for her to be wrong.

Bucky's all right. Yes, he was off after what happened to that poor bastard Collins, but then again, they all were. Even Dum-Dum lost his joviality for a while. At the chateau, that was delayed shell-shock. Monty explained it. Bucky pulled himself together. He's fine. Steve needs him to be fine, because if he's not, then… Steve wipes a hand over his face . Bucky is Steve's foundation. Steve needs him to be fine. 

"Pal, you realize that Carter has run as many top-secret missions as you have, right? Half the time, you and your team are just her back-up or her ride home."

Steve knows that. It's what he likes about Peggy, what he respects, what draws him to her. He's just rattled; she's tried to shake the ground he's standing on. But she's wrong. So's Howard. Bucky is fine. He's _fine_.

"What are you saying?" He crosses his arms over his chest and glowers at Howard.

"I'm saying that if you ever want a chance with her, pal, you better pull your head out of your ass. And stop being mad at her for caring about your friend."

Steve blinks a couple of times, trying to digest what Howard just said. "What?"

Howard shakes his head in a way that would be patronizing with anyone else, but strangely isn't with him. Okay, it's still patronizing, but it doesn't bother Steve. "Tell me something: Do you think you're the only one who gets to be friends with Barnes and look out for him? Because I hate to tell you this, but you have some stiff competition. Dugan and Falsworth would take a bullet for him. Dernier too."

"I'm not…" Steve trails off. He's not trying to make sure Bucky has no other friends. The thought is ridiculous. "We grew up together. I'll always know him best," he says, and tightens his crossed arms. He knows how it makes his biceps and chest swell, how intimidating he looks now, though he'd never use his strength against Howard. It's just a tactic. "I'm not trying to stop other people from being friends with him."

Howard raises a far too eloquent eyebrow. "Whatever you say, pal."

He's not, is he? There are the rest of the Commandos, after all. They're all friends with Bucky. Not the way that Steve is, not that close, but they're friends. They're something else besides friends, too. Steve wouldn't call it more, since his friendship with Bucky will always be unique to him, but he's certain that for all his sharp eyes and good intuition and apparent fondness for Bucky Howard hasn't figured out yet that Bucky and Steve know each other in the most biblical sense. Are together. 

Steve wants to slap himself for not even being able to think the words in his head. He loves Bucky. Why the hell can't he even _think_ that they're lovers? Bucky's so deep under his skin that Steve will never shed him without losing himself and a large part of that is because he was friends with Bucky first.

"Let me leave you with a gem of wisdom that I've learned in my rather extensive dealing with women," Howard says, and there's that smirk again that's both self-satisfied and self-deprecating. It's annoying enough it distracts Steve from his darkening mood. "Any lady likes a good apology." Howard leans closer and taps his index finger against Steve's chest. "You gotta mean it, though."

"Peggy's not just any lady," Steve says, annoyed on her behalf. She's not. 

Howard smile twitches the corner of his mouth up higher. "But she's a lady, isn't she?"

She's one of a kind and Steve hates to think that he truly made her angry. "Definitely."

"There you go," Howard says, spreading his arms wide. "QED."

"And when did you last practice this bit of wisdom?"

Howard shrugs. "Never. I let Jarvis do it for me. Perks of having a British butler."

Howard laughs at the look Steve's face. "Speaking of which, I have some secret agenda to attend to. See you in Command in two hours."

***

Steve spends the next two hours sketching. It's something he hasn't had time for lately and he relishes the way the movement of pencil on paper clears his mind. When he's done, he looks at a series of studies of Peggy's face from when he first saw her, before everything was so damn complicated, and of Bucky, back in Brooklyn next to the sorry excuse for a Christmas tree they had in 1941, his smile wide and carefree. Something's wrong about the smile, though, and Steve finds himself correcting the exact shape of it over and over again.

"Captain Rogers, sir?" 

The politely spoken words pull Steve out of his deep concentration and he looks up at a fresh-faced private he's seen running errands for Master Sergeant Billson a couple of times before. It bugs him that he can't remember the man's name. "Yes?"

"Colonel Phillips requests that you join the festivities, sir," the private says.

"Festivities?" Steve echoes.

"The party started forty-five minutes ago."

What party… ? Oh, right, that's what Howard was up to with the NCO in charge of the kitchens and Master Sergeant Billson. Steve let himself forget about it while he sketched. Damn. Looks like he completely lost track of time. Even so, none of the sketches of Bucky look right. He should quit and try something else for a while. Still, though, a party?

"Should I have been informed of that party?"

The private looks overwhelmed and confused. He's so new he still has spots. But he straightens his shoulders and says, "The Colonel was insistent, sir, that you attend."

Steve fights a blush and runs his thumb along the outside of the sketchbook. He must have covered at least ten pages since he sat down. It's rare for him to close himself off so much that he completely stops being aware of his surroundings. He guesses that just means he feels safe here.

"Yes, sorry." He closes the sketchbook. "I'll clean up and be along."

"I'll wait, sir." The private swallows hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Colonel Phillips made it very clear that I was not to return without you."

Steve bites back on a smirk. "And those were his words?"

"I – I, ah, Sergeant Ma – Ma – Mackenna t – told me to or I'd be on KP forever."

Steve laughs. "That sounds more like him." Mackenna was a big fella who liked to lord it over Dum-Dum for being demoted to corporal. Given enough whiskey the two of them would trade punches and end up crying on each other's shoulders and singing _Danny Boy_. You could almost set your watch by them.

"So, will you come, sir?"

"Of course, son. Wouldn't want you to spend the rest of the war peeling potatoes."

***

The party is in full swing when Steve enters Command Central. He has no idea how Howard convinced Phillips, but Christmas decorations festoon the room, tinsel garlands, wreathes, even lights, and a generous buffet is spread over the map table.

The food is a puzzle, because even the US military has troubles scrounging up supplies in Britain. Yet there's so much and it all looks delicious. Even fresh fruit – oranges. Steve's mouth begins to water. The only time he's had oranges is as a boy when his ma worked double shifts to afford them for his health. He's never forgotten the taste. Sour, but sweet at the same time. He knew how much his ma had paid for those oranges. Here, there are enough for each of them to have one.

People are scattered through the room, sipping from mess-hall cups. The room is crowded, but Steve spots Monty and Dum-Dum near a large bowl of punch someone's spiked, judging by their giggling.

Gabe and Jim are singing Christmas carols with a couple of WACs while Dernier sneaks closer to the pile of packages lying on Phillips' desk.

He doesn't find Bucky at first, until he looks toward a quieter corner. Bucky's sitting, Cat in his lap, stroking her puffed up fur. She obviously objects to the sudden influx of people in her space. Bucky coos to her while gently stroking between her eyes and under her chin. Peggy and Howard are wrong. They've all had their rough days, he's seen Gabe and Jim checked out several times after a mission too, it doesn't mean anything. They all bounce back eventually. Bucky is always fine. No one truly broken could be as gentle with a cat as Buck is.

Peggy is over by the buffet table with Phillips. She's changed for the occasion and is wearing a dark blue dress instead of her usual uniform. He thinks that his sketches didn't do her radiance justice and it pains Steve to think that they've fallen out, that he hurt her. Apologize, Howard said. Easier said than done when Peggy spots him and scowls at him before looking away. Phillips notices – of course he does – and raises an eyebrow at Steve. Steve shrugs, helpless. Phillips is unimpressed.

A sudden commotion by the Christmas tree next to Phillips' desk – Steve really thinks he should add quotation marks even to his thoughts when using that word, because the 'tree' looks like it was cobbled together out of twigs some poor soldier had cut off the bottom of a half-singed fir tree – distracts him from the situation with Peggy. 

Dum-Dum is next to Dernier and they're both peering at the name-tags on the pile of packages under the tree. Dernier, looking a little tipsy already, appears to be searching for something he can't find, judging by the increasingly forlorn look on his face. "You're getting coal this year, Frenchie," Dum-Dum cackles. 

Dernier flips him off, takes another swig from the cup in his left hand and keeps rifling through the packages. Steve sees him reading the names on the packages out loud, lips moving over familiar names. At one package, Dernier stops, frowns. He turns the tag around and his eyebrows climb higher on his forehead before a grin spreads over his face. He elbows Dum-Dum and shows him the package, too. Steve feels increasingly uncomfortable when they both look over to him and whistle between their teeth.

"Carter!" Dum-Dum reads out loud. "Oh, _Agent_ Carter!" The punch definitely has been spiked. 

Peggy turns around with the combination of frown and eye roll Steve has noticed seems to be reserved for Dum-Dum especially. "What?"

"There's a present for you, my lovely Agent Carter."

"There's a present for everyone under that tree, Dugan," she says, unimpressed. "And I'm not your anything." Steve realizes that she, Phillips and Howard must have planned for this on top of the Christmas party and he aches with gratitude. He wouldn't have known how to organize a party, much less arrange for presents for his entire team, and judging from the pile, half of headquarters. He'd wanted to, sure, but he just didn't have the means, financially or time-wise.

"This one's from Cap, though," Dum-Dum says with a wide grin.

Steve freezes and across the room, he sees Peggy do the same. Clearly, she was expecting that as little as he was.

"Come on, Carter!" Dum-Dum cajoles. "Open it. We all want to see."

Peggy looks at him with narrowed eyes. Steve does his best to keep a poker face while desperately trying to think who really provided the present. 

Next to Peggy, Phillips craggy face folds into a smirk aimed at both Peggy and Steve. Steve feels the blood rise to his cheeks. "Yes, Carter, go ahead," Phillips says. "That, I'm really curious about."

Peggy's look clearly says 'traitor', but she nods and sets her punch cup down. "Yes, sir."

Peggy strides toward the Christmas tree with a very forced smile on her face, studiously ignoring Steve, to a round of semi-drunk, "Carter, Carter," calls start. She laughs and punches Dum-Dum on the arm when she reaches him. He feigns falling over and whimpering in pain. Knowing Peggy's punches, he probably is – she doesn't pull them. "Stop being a baby and give me the present, Corporal," she demands, holding out her hand.

Dum-Dum complains loudly about the lack of Christmas spirit but does hand the package over. It's small and rectangular, tastefully wrapped in brown paper. It's something Steve could have got his hands on, the ruse really is good. 

Across the room, Howard slides his arm around the WAC who kissed Steve all those months ago and toasts Steve with a glass of champagne. Steve gives a quick nod, then looks away, hoping that no one noticed their exchange.

"Come on, Carter, what is it? New stockings?"

Steve doesn't dare look up. If Howard's butler really did go for stockings, he's going to die of mortification.

"It's a… book." Dernier sounds insultingly surprised.

Steve carefully looks up again.

"A book, Cap, really?" Dum-Dum asks. _He_ sounds as if he's disappointed.

"What did you get her, the Army Regulations handbook?" Jim shouts from the other side of the room. The room erupts in drunken laughter.

Peggy folds the paper into a neat rectangle and runs her fingertips over the linen binding. It's a warm yellow and appears to have flowers on the cover. Steve catches her smiling as she opens the book.

Dum-Dum cranes his neck to look over Peggy's shoulder. "Who is Edna," reads slowly, "St.Vincent Millay?" 

Oh. _Oh_. Steve feels the blood climb into his cheeks. Howard's butler really did choose a perfect gift for Peggy. Steve remembers reading _Dirge Without Music_ over and over again, marveling at the rhymes and the verses. The poem about her mother's courage, cut from a newspaper, had been on his nightstand for two years after his mother's death. St. Vincent Millay's precise words are a perfect fit for Peggy.

He feels Peggy looking at him, mouths, "I'm sorry." She smiles with her eyes and he knows he's forgiven.

Dum-Dum scratches his head which makes the Bowler bob on his head. "Edna. Sounds like a real ball-buster." He winks at Steve. "That why you chose this for Carter, Cap?"

"Dugan, your mouth is open," Peggy says, clipped.

Dum-Dum's wide grin falters a little; his hand goes to his moustache. "Yeah?"

"Sound is coming out of it. You might want to make it stop."

Someone in the room whistles between his teeth. The rest laugh, loudly.

"Then get me more booze and I will," Dum-Dum grins.

"I highly doubt it," Peggy says, deadpan. "But in the Christmas spirit: Get the man his present, Falsworth."

"Who is Edna?" Dernier pipes up. As usual, his English improves when he's drunk.

"She's a poet," Gabe, who has moved closer by now, informs Dernier. "I read her in college."

"Oh, _poetry_ ," Jim coos.

 _"If faut de la poésie à courtiser une dame."_ Steve has no idea what Dernier said, but the wink Dernier gives him has him blushing to the roots. 

Gabe grins and oh so helpfully translates for everyone in the room. "You need to woo a classy lady with poetry."

Peggy ignores them and walks over to Steve. He suddenly has no idea what to do with his hands, and goes from stuffing them in his pockets, remembering that that's rude, to crossing his arms over his chest, remembering that that reads as dismissive, to just having them hang at his sides, limp. His fingertips brush a seam on his uniform pants and he picks at a thread there with his fingernails.

Peggy smiles when she reaches him and says to the room at large, "Anyone who so much as makes a sound now will be going childless for the rest of their lives," then goes to her tiptoes and brushes a kiss against his cheek. "Thank you, Captain. I look forward to reading it."

Her lips are warm against his skin, her perfume subtle. The brush of her hair sends tingles down his spine. He's only aware that he's closed his eyes when there's a long hush in the room and he opens them. Peggy's brown eyes glitter with mirth and something warmer and Steve feels even more blood climb into his cheeks.

"You're welcome," he says and adds, quieter, "And I really am very sorry."

"I know," she says.

Behind her back, Steve sees Monty with his hand over Dum-Dum's mouth. The rest of his team – minus Bucky, who's intent on Cat, and either doesn't want to notice or really doesn't – just grin, grins that comically fade when Peggy turns back around.

"Excellent, gentlemen," she comments. "I knew even you lot could be trained." 

Steve is surprised to see Phillips breaking out into another smirk at that. 

"How about some more gifts as a reward?" Dum-Dum asks.

"The only one I can see deserving one right now is Sergeant Barnes," Peggy says. "Seeing as he's the only one with manners in the room."

Bucky lifts his head slowly, as though waking from a daydream. "Not looking forward to coal, ma'am. I'm pretty sure Santa counts sniper duties as naughty." The self-deprecating tone of Bucky's voice makes Steve and several others wince.

"Good thing he's not here then, isn't it?" she says. She marches over the pile of packages, chooses two without a long search, and hands them to Bucky, who has trouble juggling both Cat and the large and small package.

Dum-Dum looks torn between whistling again – something Monty stops with a warning glare – and craning his neck to see what Bucky got.

"Hand out the rest, Dugan, before you die of curiosity," Phillips says, diverting the attention from Bucky.

Dum-Dum does as he's told with a look of glee on his face. "You heard the Colonel!"

"You can stop poking fun now, Dugan," Monty says once he's received his packages. He lifts the smaller one. "Look, we each get one from the Captain, not just Barnes and Carter." 

He's right, Steve sees now. Every one of his team receives the same combination of large and small package that Bucky received and that makes sense, but if they all contain the same thing, then Bucky will know that Steve didn't choose them. They've always given each other presents with a story behind them, small things that didn't require a lot of money but meant a lot.

"Holy cow, Cap, how did you come by these?" Gabe asks as he unwraps his smaller package. "And engraved, too!" He holds up a silver cigarette lighter. "Nice."

Dernier gestures with his lighter, says something in rapid fire French, and grins like a maniac. Gabe doubles over laughing.

"What?" Dum-Dum asks. "What's so funny?"

"Better boom," Gabe wheezes and mimes a large explosion.

Steve grins as well – they all know that Dernier doesn't smoke, but he always complains about wet matches when he sets particular explosives. The lighter definitely was the perfect gift for him. He's been using one appropriated from a dead Hydra officer, the offensive skull-and-tentacles insignia scratched out. The new one has a star within two circles on one side and Dernier's name on the other.

"Oh, God, boots," Steve hears Jim say to his left. He sounds reverent and when Steve turns to look at him, he's running his hand over the dark leather of a new pair of boots as if they were the skin of a lover.

"Are you making out with the boots, Morita?" Dum-Dum calls.

"Tell me you're not?"

"I'm going to cuddle with mine," Monty states. The laughter that follows is sympathetic. Neither of them have seen new boots since they returned from Azzano, it's been the topic around many campfires where they tried to dry the cracking leather and complained about bad fits.

Steve tries to find Howard somewhere to thank him, but he's suspiciously absent, as is the WAC. Phillips meets his gaze and shrugs with sardonic smile. He's right, Steve thinks. That's just like Howard Stark.

"Hey, where did Sarge go?" Gabe asks suddenly. "We were about to sing some Christmas carols."

Steve's attention snaps back to the people around him and he tries to spot Bucky. Neither he nor Cat are anywhere to be seen. That funny sense of something not right returns.

"I think he took Cat out so she wouldn't wreck the tree or get into the wrapping paper," Peggy says. Her look to Steve clearly says: follow him. She’s subtly covering for Bucky.

"That's a shame," Dum-Dum says. "It ain't the same without Jimmy butchering _'I Saw Three Ships'_."

"Well, you wouldn't say that if you stepped on Cat and she clawed your face off," Gabe allows.

Dernier mimes claws and points to his chest, nodding.

Jim digs an elbow into Gabe's side and snickers, "Like his last lady friend did when he stepped _out_ on her?"

"Hey – !" Dum-Dum protests.

"You mean when he ran from her like a dog with its tail between its legs?" Monty adds.

Dum-Dum's good natured protests grow louder while the rest of the team snigger, but Steve’s mind is on Bucky.

"Take his presents," Phillips, who has suddenly appeared next to him, says, and hands him Bucky's packages. "Get out of here. You've done your duty."

"Yes, sir," Steve says, grateful that Phillips understands.

"Merry Christmas, Rogers."

"Merry Christmas, sir."

He slips out to the off tune of _Silent Night_ and Monty doing a running commentary on the lyrics.

***

He finally finds Bucky back in their hotel room. Bucky's left it dark, so only the sliver of light from the open door illuminates his profile. He's sitting facing the window and only the way his shoulders sink indicates that he notices Steve's arrival.

"You should have stayed," Bucky says. "Make sure that Stark's not trying to get your girl."

"Peggy's not…" Steve trails off. "It's not like that."

"It should be," Bucky says and Steve hates the calm tone Bucky has. "You were mad about her before."

Steve takes a breath to voice his protest that that was before for a reason, but Buck continues, "Everyone says you're perfect for each other." Bucky's voice changes, and suddenly he sounds like Dum-Dum, "After the war, you'll settle down in a pretty little house and raise half a dozen pretty little kids." 

The words sound so familiar, yet Steve can't place them.

"Buck—" he tries, but Bucky goes on as if he hasn't heard him. 

"She clearly thinks you're the bee's knees. So, go and get her. I'm sure Stark put up mistletoe somewhere."

"Bucky, stop, just stop." Steve walks over and falls to his knees in front of Bucky's chair. He reaches for Bucky's face and frames it between his hands. "Why are you doing this?"

It's the first time in thirty-four days and twelve hours that Bucky doesn't flinch from Steve's touch. He looks outside the window, though, where a streetlight offers meager illumination. "You should be happy. Normal. That’s how it _should_ be."

"I don't want to be normal if that means being without you," Steve whispers. "I miss you." He swallows against the lump in his throat and runs his thumbs along the smooth shaved skin on Bucky's cheeks. "I miss the way we used to be. I want it back." He hears his own voice break. Even if he never gets to make love or kiss Bucky again, he needs his best friend back. "I want us back, Bucky."

Bucky takes a long, shaky breath, then he bows his head and rests his forehead against Steve's. Steve whispers, "Can't we just… just for tonight, can't we pretend that we're back in Brooklyn? Like that Christmas after Ma died, when it was so cold in my place you slipped into my bed to keep me warm?"

Bucky tenses, but Steve keeps stroking along Bucky's cheeks, then threads his fingers through Bucky's hair. "That was the safest I ever felt," Steve admits. He'd thought that if he ever got to touch Bucky again, he'd never be able to keep himself from kissing him, but he surprises himself with how much he just craves Bucky's closeness, his scent, and it's not sexual at all. His heartbeat slows to something calmer in Bucky's presence. Bucky has always been home, his touchstone to keep him grounded. Steve doesn't know how to go on without him. "Can't we pretend we're those two kids again? No war, no anger, no Nazis, no military, no super-soldier serum. Just two kids from Brooklyn." He feels the tears that are prickling in his eyes spill over. "Please?"

Bucky drops his head to Steve's shoulder, takes a shuddering breath and closes his arms around Steve hard enough it hurts. Steve clutches him back, buries his face in the spot between Bucky's shoulder and neck. He dries his tears against Bucky's uniform jacket, breathing in the scent of wool and sweat. The relief is so complete that he shudders with it.

Bucky pulls him up then and undresses him quietly, until Steve's just in his underpants and undershirt. He follows suit, then steers Steve toward the bed. They both slip in and Bucky curls around Steve. Steve's too large for this now and the bed is too narrow to really be comfortable. It doesn't matter.

They pull the blanket up around them and Bucky's closeness, his warmth, the familiarity of his body… it's so much like being back home, in the place where he belongs, that he lost… Steve takes a hiccupping breath against the feelings choking him. Oh, God, he never wants to get up again. Just stay here, let the war fight itself. He's safe and where he belongs and yet he's so, so afraid that once he leaves this bed, once he moves even an inch, it will have been a dream and he'll be alone again. He pulls Bucky's arm around him and presses Bucky's hand over his heart as if Bucky can ground him, stop his heart from breaking apart. 

"Shh," Bucky murmurs against his shoulder. He brushes his hand in tiny motions over Steve's chest. "Shh, Stevie." His body melts against Steve's, closing the gap that has been between them since the chateau.

Both their fingers brush against the body-warm metal of Steve's dogtags. An idea forms in Steve's mind, but he can't hold on to it as sleep pulls him under faster than it has in the past thirty-four days and twenty hours.

***

When Steve wakes, Bucky's wrapped around him as if they haven't moved all night. His fingers are tangled in Steve's dogtags. Most importantly, though, Bucky's still there and, that, more than anything, makes Steve breathe easier.

Something changed last night, subtle but clear. In the dim grey light of the early London morning, Steve understands that he may not get to have sex with Bucky again until the war is over and they have more time to work things out between them. But if they can have this at least, if they can get back to having this, Steve thinks he'll be okay. They both will be okay.

He's willing to wait.

Somewhere down on the streets, he hears someone singing a carol, warbling and half-drunk. He remembers that he never gave Bucky a present. The thought he had late the night before returns and with a little shuffling involved, he manages to slip the chain of his dogtags over his head without waking Bucky. Careful, so very carefully, he lifts Bucky's hand on his chest and slips the chain around Bucky's wrist. Before he lets go, he presses his lips to the tips of Bucky's fingertips. Guilt gnaws at him for doing this while Bucky sleeps, like he's taking something that's not his to take. He respects Bucky's obvious wish to not be with him any longer, but it doesn't stop Steve wanting him. Doesn't make him stop loving Bucky.

"You shouldn't do that," Bucky murmurs against his shoulder, proving that he's awake despite Steve's best attempts.

"I want to," Steve insists. "Merry Christmas."

"Steve," Bucky tries again.

"They're something to send to the family if – " Steve clears his throat, unwilling to jinx himself and his team. "I have no family left. The only one who matters is here in this room." _It's all I can give you,_ he thinks.

Bucky sucks in a sharp breath and moves away from Steve and to a sitting position. He doesn't say anything for long minutes. Steve feels cold now that Bucky's warmth is missing.

He can't stop himself, follows his instinct, and scoots closer to Bucky, rests his cheek against Bucky's shoulder blade. Bucky's heart thunders loud against his ribs. "Take them," Steve murmurs. "They're yours."

"Hey, Cap, Sarge!" Jim's voice, hangover rough, is accompanied by a loud banging on their door makes them both flinch apart. "You've slept long enough." He bangs on their door again and Steve scrambles from the bed to go and open it before Jim bursts in and sees that only one bed has been slept in.

"What?" he asks. He blocks Jim's view of the room with his body. "Bucky was sleeping. So was I." Damn it.

That subdues Jim a bit; he too, knows that Bucky doesn't sleep enough. "Sorry," he says and he sounds serious. Jim looks as hangover-creased as he sounded, even if he is awake. Steve's not surprised – Howard's punch was more like hard alcohol spiked with a few choice fruits. "Intel's got a line on a train moving Hydra weapons and one of their scientists," Jim says. "Phillips and Carter want us all back in Command."

Steve fights a sigh. Neither of them is ready to go out again, their R&R wasn't long enough. "You managed to rouse the others?" he asks.

Jim smirks. "I have my ways," he says. "You get Sarge, I'll get the others."

When Steve closes the door and turns around, Bucky is dressed already, but sitting on the bed again. He's still staring at Steve's tags. 

"This might not be the best idea," he says as if to himself. "If I wear them and get killed, they'll think they managed to take out Captain America."

Steve's heart thumps painfully against his ribs at Bucky's words. "Don't get killed, then," he says, even if the words want to dry up and die in his throat. The thought alone is… He crouches by the bed and brushes his fingertips against Bucky's hand, which is white-knuckled around the tags. "Don't die."

Bucky looks at their hands, then at Steve. His mouth thins to a white line. He slips the tags around his neck. "Fine," he says, "I won't die."

"Promise."

"I won't die."


	11. July 2015, Arkansas

**July 2015, Arkansas**

"Anteroom of hell," Sam muttered. "Tell me again why we had to go to freaking West Helena in July?"

"It's where the next base is," Steve said for what felt like the tenth time already. It's not like Sam didn't know that they were following the pattern that had emerged in Bucky's take-down of Hydra bases. State by state, big cities, small cities, stateside, in Europe, Russia, and one trip had even taken them to Sri Lanka. Bucky was cutting the head off from its limbs, depriving Hydra of its seemingly endless supply of cannon fodder goons and embarrassing the hell out of them by leaving them alive for prosecution and incarceration.

Steve's sweaty hand slipped on the wheel as he clutched it tighter in frustration.

Sooner or later this was bound to happen – they were heading toward a full-on fight. A blow out, which, on a day with 105ºF, near tropical humidity, and in a car with broken air conditioning, couldn't be very far away anymore.

"The latest lead to another dead end in a long line of dead ends," Sam said, turning his face toward the rolled down window. "We've been at it for eight months now, Steve."

 _You think I don't know that?_ He bit down on a snarl. Sam was a good friend, he reminded himself, but he hadn't signed up the rest of his life to Steve's search. It wasn't Sam's fight. Instead, he agreed, "Yeah." 

"Seriously, man, I hate to be a nag, but – "

"But what?" Steve ground out from between clenched teeth. "What am I supposed to do, just stop, go back to life as usual? Take up Pepper's offer of a job?"

"It's a valid option."

"No, it's not!" he slammed his hand against the side of the wheel, making the car lurch. "I don't have… " He bit back on the pathetic sounding rest of the sentence. It was true, though – he didn't have a life outside of this. It was this or the Avengers, and the training phase was over, no current crisis to be averted. He wasn't needed on base. 

"You always have a choice. You don't owe him the rest of your life."

"No," Steve whispered. Memories he'd dredged up over the past eight months flared to life. Images of Bucky during the war, his steady descent into what Steve now realized was clinical depression, Steve's failure to see how what Zola had done to him had already changed him back then, to act when there still would have been a chance to save Bucky. And always, always, Bucky's fall, the way Steve had failed to hold on to the railing – he could have reached it, why had he grabbed for Bucky's hand when all he would have had to do was to hold on to the damn railing Bucky was clinging to? The cold, brutal details from the Winter Soldier file. All down to him. The promise. _I won't die._ Bucky had kept his promise. "I owe him more."

"A dog with a bone has nothing on you," Sam huffed.

Except reality was crushing that bone to dust. He wasn't ready to articulate it outside of his head yet, much less admit it to Sam, not yet, but all of the memories he'd revisited and reframed… They'd let Steve see just how much he'd missed or misunderstood back then. He'd already done wrong by Bucky then and he had begun to wonder if this chase all over the world wasn't the wrong thing once more. Around the time he'd given up the new rental car to the pregnant woman with the two kids on her way home, he'd started wondering what would happen, what would change if he just stopped. If he went home. Wherever that was. Even before the ice, he’d already given up their apartment, their home, to those Irish newlyweds, without even telling Bucky, and now that haunted him as well.

"Nothing?" Sam asked. "Really, nothing?" He turned the mini-fan the rental place lady had given them with the apologetic shrug all the way toward him and aimed it solely at his face.

"Hey," Steve protested. "Just because I was frozen for seventy years doesn't mean I love the heat."

"Oh, no," Sam said. "You need to stop making decisions that affect me without asking me, you know? You insisted on letting the lady take the nice SUV with the _functioning_ air-conditioning that I had _reserved_ for us. You insist on being Mr. Perfect Gentleman? You deserve to drown in your own sweat." He gestured toward the dashboard. "This piece of shit doesn't even have a working radio."

"Say your mind, why don't you?" Steve squeezed the steering wheel hard enough the plastic creaked. He itched to ask Sam to just go ahead and… He shook his head against a drop of sweat rolling down his temple. God, the heat was getting to him. No, actually, the humidity was. It would have been bearable if it weren't for the humidity. 

"Say my mind?" Sam echoed. "Fine. I'm tired. I haven't been in one place for more than three days in the past six months, I hate the heat and right now, I'd kiss the god damn Winter Soldier himself if he was still frozen –"

Steve sucked in a breath. They were both starting to get cabin fever, and the heat didn't help, but this was unusually thoughtless, especially for Sam.

"Shit, sorry." Sam wiped a hand over his face. The fact that he actually did sound taken aback appeased Steve some. "Too soon?" Sam didn't wait for Steve to reply. "Yeah, too soon." He threw his phone on the backseat. "I gotta stop texting with Tony."

"You've been in one hell of a mood for three states now. Care to tell me what's wrong?"

Sam released a deep breath. "The last three states have been Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, so yeah, I'm in a 'mood'. It's called being uncomfortable as hell."

"Why?"

"Sweet summer child," Sam said on a mirthless laugh. "You really don't get it, do you? Steve, if we get in a fight with Hydra here, and the cops get involved, _you_ might get slapped in cuffs. The Hydra goons, too. _I_ might get shot. Or have an 'accident' in the jail. And, man, I don't heal as fast as you."

"Shit, I didn't…" Steve swallowed hard. "I'm sorry."

Sam expelled a breath. "Not your fault." 

But unsaid was that this was something Sam always had to bear in mind, which never occurred to Steve, who had always prided himself on standing up to bullies and inequity.

It wasn't right. No one should have to feel unsafe going anywhere in this country, and yet, and yet. "One day…" he started but trailed off. Seventy years had passed since he argued to have Gabe in the Commandos. It was getting harder to believe that the world had changed. It was getting harder to keep believing in his ideals.

"You're doing your best, Steve," Sam, who seemed to have guessed the reason Steve didn't finish the sentence.

 _For what?_ Steve thought. _What difference does it make?_

He knew better than to voice that thought aloud. If he was honest with himself, he knew that deep down, he didn't believe it. It had been the one thing that kept him going, even before the serum. He knew that he could make a difference on more than just the battlefield, if he set his mind to it. People listened to him. That didn't make the moments of doubt any easier.

"I should be the one reassuring you," he said. "I'm sorry I've dragged you along in all of this."

"Don't remember you holding a gun to my head and making me," Sam said. "Though if we were back in the nice, _air-conditioned_ airport with a chance at a flight to the Antarctic right now, you might have to."

Steve didn't blame Sam for complaining. Even with the windows rolled down, there was no relief. The air rushing in felt like it came from an oven operating on high with someone constantly sprinkling water in it, filling the air with steam. Every movement, even the smallest one, just made more sweat spring from his pores. The sun burned down on them, reflecting off the glass and chrome of other cars, blinding him sometimes, adding to his headache.

"Fourth of July weekend," Steve commented, wiping a hand over his forehead to stop the sweat from dripping into his eyes. "Good luck with that."

"God, don't remind me. Just drive and let me dream."

A red light on the dashboard made Steve groan. "The driving part might be a problem."

Sam straightened from his slouched position in the passenger seat. "What?"

"Looks like it's over-heating."

"Oh, come on!" Sam slapped the dashboard. His hand left a damp print on the dark plastic. "Stupid piece of god damned junk." 

The car coughed as if it took offense, reminding Steve of a jeep back in Poland in '44. It got them out of a couple of close shaves despite its age and state of repair, but it took it personal whenever it was insulted. He bit back telling the story.

"Don't you dare," Sam said. "Can't even insult the car now," he muttered under his breath.

Steve ventured a smile at that, only for Sam to notice and start ranting. "You know, when we started this whole search back in October, I had a feeling that following Captain America around might end with me in the hospital but not," he wriggled around in his seat and reached for the backseat to get at his phone which, somewhere under the mountain of empty water bottles, was dinging, "for _heat stroke_." 

"Sorry?" Steve tried. "I really – "

"I'm not blaming you," Sam said. "Much."

Outside the car, everything was lush and oppressively green, so different from places Steve knew and New York or Europe. It felt like a jungle, but without the fresh scents he'd always imagined in a jungle. The scent wafting in from the trees and grassy areas they passed was nearly putrid, like half-baked mud and sweet with rot. The latter part at least made sense, since it was so hot that even in the high humidity, the plants were wilting and browning at the edges.

"Tony."

"Could we not?" Steve signaled and took the exit for the park he'd seen signs for earlier. "I'm not… I just don't feel like dealing with a surprise party."

"So your birthday really is July fourth?" Sam stopped trying to get at his phone and looked at him. "I thought that was all just propaganda."

"A lot was and a lot is, but not that."

"Huh." Sam didn't say anything else for a couple of minutes. "I need to find you a present."

Steve moved his hand in a throwaway gesture. "You really don't."

"If you tell me that birthdays are over-rated, I'm going to literally have to smack you upside the head. Birthdays are taken very seriously in the Wilson family."

"You're with me, even in this weather and in this car, that's – " Steve began, but Sam interrupted him.

"No, no, don't get mushy now. I get over emotional when it's this hot. Tears on top of the sweat? Just, no." He twitched a quirky smile at Steve. "But thanks for the sentiment." He held a hand out the window to let the air flow between his fingers, then he added, "Don't think you're off the hook about your birthday."

Steve laughed. "How about doing the planning later and cooling off your sentimental heart first?" 

Sam looked back at him, narrowing his eyes. "That's just cruel now."

***

"How did I miss the sign for this?" Sam asked when they rolled into the day use area of Storm Creek Lake. The cars and families Steve had expected were all gone or leaving. It was strange, but maybe there was a parade or fireworks or something they were going to see.

Steve bit back on a smirk. "Possibly because you were too busy searching for your phone to complain to Tony?" He hadn’t known about the recreation area either, until he spotted the sign for exit ramp mentioning it. Sam had had his head ducked and been cursing his phone’s lack of bars.

Sam looked like he was about to argue, but thought better of it and shrugged. "Good point."

They got out of the car and breathed a sigh of relief in unison when a slightly cooler breeze came in from the lake.

"Damn, this is nice."

The sun was dipping low behind the trees fringing the lake, turning the glistening blue expanse into shades of tangerine while the sky around it darkened with the fast approaching heavy clouds of a thunderstorm. That had to be why everyone else had cleared out. Only three cars were left in the parking lot. The air already held the hair-raising current that heralded lightning. On the fishing pier, the four people were packing up their gear with quick, concerned looks toward the clouds. 

"Big one coming," one of the guys said when he walked past Steve and Sam. He indicated the rapidly darkening sky. "Better head home."

Steve didn't bother telling him that home had lost all meaning to him and, also, that their car wasn't really up to driving until it had cooled down. "Sure thing," he replied instead and smiled at the man.

The day use area was already empty and, within minutes, the last car rolled out. He and Sam were alone, but unlike being trapped together in the car, it felt nice. No one was watching them.

The air, Steve noticed, had the strangely morbid scent of flowers just past their bloom and on their way into decay, heaving the last of their heady perfume into the world but losing the battle against time and nature. It clung to the inside of his nose and his skin and he felt the urge to wipe it off. Wipe it all off, all the guilt and hopelessness dragging him down, and maybe, just maybe emerge clean.

That was another thought he knew better than to share with Sam lest he worry him even more.

"First one in gets to pick dinner," Steve said, forcing his voice into a much more cheerful tone than he felt, and began to pull off his sweat-soaked shirt. If they were quick enough, they'd manage to have a quick dip in the lake before the thunderstorm broke lose.

"I'm not having sushi for the fourth night in a row, you freak," Sam said and pushed his shorts off his legs. He'd already been barefoot and had a slight advantage over Steve who was wearing shoes to drive. "Eating sushi in the South is just wrong."

"I can give you a head-start if you want," Steve teased, more out of habit than because he felt particularly mischievous.

"Don't say it," Sam warned while pulling off his shirt. "Don't you dare say it."

Steve smirked and kicked off his shoes and khakis. He did love how that one phrase could rile Sam up.

Sam was down to his boxer shorts and began running over the brown grass toward the small sandy beach-area. Steve gave one last look around to see if the area around the pier really was empty, then pushed down his underwear and began running, naked as Mother Nature had made him – even if she hadn't made him like this – after Sam. The short sprint made him sweat even more, but it was worth it hearing Sam shouting, "No, no, no, you damn cheater – "

"On your left!" Steve stage-whispered, shouldered past Sam, and ran into the lake, splashing for all he was worth and eventually diving into the cool water.

"Agggggh, I'm blind!" Sam shrieked. "It's the moon!"

It erupted from there, all the tension they had ramped up between them over the last few days blowing up in one of the most spectacular water fights Steve had ever had. He didn't know he'd needed the laughter Sam's insistent - and futile - attempts at dunking him, paired with complaints and inventive curses, brought. Eventually he stopped evading Sam and actively went for payback, making Sam swallow half the lake and finally plead for mercy.

"You're like a bloodhound on the scent," Sam gasped, laughing, when Steve let go. He turned to his back and stretched out his arms, breathing hard. "No wonder you haven't given up the hunt for Barnes yet."

"Yeah," Steve said. He had to force the smile to stay on his face, because that… He turned on his back as well, dead-man style and looked at the masses of dark clouds above them. With his ears under the surface of the water, drowning out every other sound, his breathing was loud.

That was the second time Sam had compared him to a dog chasing something.

Was that what he was doing? Chasing, no, hunting, Bucky like some wild thing he wanted in a cage? How must it feel for Bucky to be hunted like that? Did that mean that Steve was doing it again, ignoring what Buck needed and selfishly only seeking his own wish-fulfillment? 

He'd done that before, hadn't he? Not so much actively ignored as he'd never really asked, never even thought to ask what Bucky wanted, what he needed. And as much as he was telling himself that he didn't want Bucky to fall back into Hydra's hands, he realized with a clarity that clamped an icy ring around his heart that he had no idea if Bucky maybe _wanted_ to be back with Hydra. It seemed unlikely; it seemed like an abomination to even think it, but Steve couldn't be sure. All he had at the end of the day was the lie he'd been telling himself since the day they started this search: he was doing this for Bucky.

If he were brutally honest with himself — and he had to be now or never — Steve had to admit that this wasn't about Bucky at all. It was about him, about his penance, his pain, his loss, his loneliness and isolation, and alleviating all that by having Bucky back in his life.

The memories he'd relived since he found Johanna's video all those months ago made it clear that he'd failed Bucky in every way that counted. He should have seen what Phillips and Peggy had seen, should have learned French earlier so he'd have understood back at the Chateau that Bucky never expected to come home from the war, that Bucky had lost himself. He should have sent Bucky home after Azzano, at the very least after the Chateau, to live his life and braid his sister's hair and go to college to get that degree he'd always dreamt about, not dragged him back into the warzone, beyond the front lines and into the danger of being captured again. 

A gust of wind washed a wave over his face and he coughed. Overhead, lightning zigzagged over the sky, brightening the eerie evening thunderstorm semi-darkness and as if that lightning had already struck, he realized that he was doing it again: he was _assuming_ what would have been best for Bucky. He should have asked what Bucky wanted - wanted from _him_ , from _them_ , too – and considered what he needed, not what Steve did. Instead of just dragging Bucky with him, he should have stopped and asked or he should have just let Bucky make his own decision without any prompting whatsoever.

Sam had handed Steve a book by a French World War II pilot he claimed was famous one night on the road. The story of the fox came back to him and with it came a pain Steve hadn't known since the serum took effect: the feeling of his heart clutching, hurting like hell, as it stuttered and then thumped too hard, too fast.

_'I have gained the color of the wheat fields.'_

If he was doing it again, chasing Bucky, making all that Bucky was about himself, then he needed to stop. Needed to let go. Even if he never saw Bucky again, he would be doing right by him, finally, after being selfish for so long.

He had gained the color of the wheat fields already, after all.

The idea hurt. Hurt so much Steve forgot how to breathe for long, agonizing moments, but when the pain finally subsided, he felt calm. It was the right thing to do. He'd pursued his own wishes, his own ideals long enough. It was time to stop being selfish and do right by Bucky. Finally.

He floated while the wind whipped up more waves, lightning and thunder cracking in ever quicker succession. The rain began to pour down and he wondered for a few breaths what would happen if he just – 

"Come on, you idiot," Sam shouted over a loud clap of thunder and the rushing sound of rain. He grabbed Steve's arm and pulled him along toward the shore. "No matter how invincible you think you are, even you won't survive a lightning strike."

Bucky had said that too. Steve squeezed his eyes shut then opened them and began swimming. He'd taken one friend for granted for too long. He wouldn't endanger Sam's life any longer. It was time for Sam to go home. Time for Steve to stop.

The rain had become a deluge by the time they reached the shore, thunder cracked and boomed without pause, and the rising wind whipped the few trees by the meadow, bending them brutally low to the ground. Neither of them stopped to dress, they just grabbed what of their clothes hadn't been blown away yet, and ran toward the car.

In front of him, Sam stopped in his tracks with a subdued, "Son of a bitch," muttered under his breath. Steve, not expecting the abrupt stop, barreled into him, and they both struggled to catch their balance.

A slim, familiar figure dressed in black cargo pants and a long-sleeved black shirt stood next to their car at parade rest. The wind whipped his long hair around his face, nearly obscuring it. It didn't matter. Steve would have recognized him blindfolded in the dark.

He froze for a long moment, afraid he'd lost his mind and was imagining this because he wanted it so badly. Bucky. He was _here_. He'd come to find Steve and that had to mean – he didn't know what that had to mean, just that it was important. God, it was Bucky, he was alive, was there.

He stumbled, barely registered Sam stepping between him and Bucky.

Sam was the first one to find his ability to speak again. "If you were going to shoot us, you'd have already done it, so I'm gonna go and... wait in the car." He clapped Steve on the shoulder and whispered, "Put some pants on at least," before he walked around the car and got inside, rolling up the windows.

Steve did pull on his damp pants, unthinking, near-mechanically. He gave a helpless chuckle when he saw the corner of Bucky's mouth quirk up at his attempt to pull up the wet denim. The wind stung, Steve's skin prickled in the rain, he was cold and hot at the same time, and so incredibly alive with it. It was Bucky standing there, watching him. _Bucky_ , after all these months, close enough to touch. Tears prickled in his eyes.

He took one step forward toward Bucky, then hesitated, hovering two steps away, unsure of his welcome.

Bucky stood hunched forward slightly with his arms slung around his midriff, a vulnerable, self-protective body-language that held nothing of the Winter Soldier's lethality, and made everything in Steve want to wrap him up and keep him safe. "Bucky," he whispered. "God, Buck."

"There was a lake like this one," Bucky said, his voice raspy with disuse. He reached out as if to touch Steve's arm, then hesitated, inches away from Steve's skin. "I remember a lake." It sounded stronger this time, but he pulled his hand back and looked at Steve with the same terrified confusion in his eyes that had been in them on the helicarrier. "I don't… " Bucky shook his head, wet hair sliding against his forehead and sticking to his cheek. "I don't remember what happened after."

Steve wanted nothing but to surge forward and press his lips against Bucky's, bury his face against Bucky's neck, and never let go. Tell him that he would help him remember each and every moment. Steve stomped down on the selfish wish instead and said, "It'll come to you. Eventually."

He reached out his hand, palm up, an open invitation.

Bucky stared at it, not moving. A minute passed. Two. Half an eternity. Bucky still didn't move.

It was time to make a decision, Steve realized. If he really was serious about what he'd decided earlier, then he couldn't force Bucky into accepting his help. 

He'd had this moment. It would have to be enough.

He was beginning to draw his hand back, accepting Bucky's decision when Bucky reached out, closed his flesh hand around Steve's, hot palm against Steve's cold one and said, "Help me remember."

Fin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story would not exist without two people: Auburn and murron.  
> They listened to countless outbursts of "but how do I solve this?", and "oh, God, this is so dark I'm not sure I can continue" or just plain and simple "arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh" via e-mail, held my hand, assured me that it was worth continuing. Their suggestions, their support and their love have made me want to finish even in times when I wanted to give up.  
> There is not even remotely enough I can say to properly convey just how much their support means.  
> Their beta, (and in Auburn's case) gamma and delta reads were invaluable. They both were there for me in some of the most stressful times of their lives and still, they never once said no. I have no way to ever repay that. All I can say is thank you.  
> So, thank you, my lovelies. Thank you for the gift of your friendship. I love you.  
> I also want to say thank you to Karen Bass for advising on the first chapter and Darija and Florence for help with the French translations.  
> Some more notes on the research that went into the story will follow at a later point, but for now, I wanted to have the final chapter out before my birthday . So, if you read the final chapter now and are interested in some of the facts that went into the story, do check back in a couple of days.


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